In 1790 Immanuel Kant published his third Critique, the Kritik derUrteilskraft, one of the most influential studies on aesthetics in modernEurope. Particularly his discussion of the sublime remains to this very day apoint of reference. But Kant had already discussed the sublime in an earlierwork in 1764. This early work, Beobachtungen über das Gefühl des Schönenund Erhabenen, was translated into Dutch in 1804. In the introduction the(anonymous) Dutch author refers to Paulus van Hemert as the driving forcebehind the translation. Between 1796 and 1798, this Paulus van Hemen hadpublished Beginzels der kantiaansche wijsgeerte, a four-volume introduction toKant's critical philosophy. In this article I present Kant's early interpretationof the sublime and the later discussion of it in the Kritik der Urteilskraft, bymeans of these two Dutch texts.
