Q0256

Immanuel Kant

A verified English rendering from the curated archive.

English

The sublime is what is absolutely great.
Thinker Immanuel Kant
School German Idealism
Source Critique of Judgment §25
Theme Philosophy
Another quotation More from this thinker

Source context

This English passage is associated with Critique of Judgment §25, within the tradition of German Idealism. The wording below is a verified rendering prepared for careful reading rather than a claim of unique translation authority.

A short reading

Read in the register of philosophy, the sentence asks the reader to test an assumption rather than to collect a slogan. In Immanuel Kant's wider work, similar claims are usually offered as prompts for judgment: what would have to be true for the sentence to hold, and what would follow if it did?

How to cite this quotation

APA: Immanuel Kant. (n.d.). The sublime is what is absolutely great. In Philosophy Blind Box. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0256

MLA: Immanuel Kant. “The sublime is what is absolutely great..” Philosophy Blind Box, https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0256.

Chicago: Immanuel Kant. “The sublime is what is absolutely great..” Philosophy Blind Box. Accessed 2026. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0256.

Same thinker

More from Immanuel Kant

  1. Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe…: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.
  2. Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.
  3. Dare to know! Have the courage to use your own understanding!
  4. Act so that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in that of another, always as an end and never merely as a means.
  5. It is impossible to think of anything at all in the world, or indeed even beyond it, that could be considered good without limitation except a good will.

All quotations by Immanuel Kant

Same theme

More on philosophy

  1. It is through wonder that people both now begin and first began to philosophize.
  2. A person's character is their destiny.
  3. What is opposed brings together; from what differs comes the finest harmony.
  4. Death is nothing to us: for what has been dissolved has no sensation, and what has no sensation is nothing to us.
  5. Pleasure is the beginning and end of the happy life — not the pleasures of profligates, but freedom from pain in the body and from disturbance in the soul.

Browse the philosophy theme