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This article examines contemporaneous reports about two versions of lectures in aesthetics, which were given at Prague University by Johann Heinrich Dambeck (1774–1820). They were recorded by the publisher Joseph Adolf Hanslik (1785–1859) in a manuscript summary in 1819 and a two-volume book published in 1822 and 1823. The article presents a comparison of the two sources in order to determine which parts of the commentary originate with Dambeck and which with Hanslik. Considering the large scope and the bibliographical nature of the chief part of the appendices to the book, the author of the article concludes that they originated not with Dambeck, but with Hanslik.

This essay refutes the widely held view that the aesthetics lectures given by Johann Heinrich Dambeck (1774–1820), a professor ordinarius at Prague, were essentially Kantian. The first part discusses the errors that have led to this view. The second part, the core of the essay, considers examples of the Kantian viewpoints that Petr Vít, in his works in the 1980s, selected from a published version of Dambeck’s lectures and compares them with ideas expressed in Kant’s Critique of Judgement (1790). The essay then expands the comparison to include all places where Kant’s name and works appear in the Dambeck publication. The last part of the essay compares these places with the MS version of Dambeck’s lectures. The comparison seeks to demonstrate that neither of these versions can rightly be called purely Kantian, because although they are repeatedly mentioned in Dambeck’s works, Kant’s views are not generally shared or even developed in them.

Although research to date has helped in important ways to shed light on the penetration of Burke’s Enquiry into the German-language area, a comprehensive treatment of this reception as a process distinguished not only by changes over time, but also characterized by regional variations, remains lacking. Based on the lectures on aesthetics by August Gottlieb Meißner (1753–1807) at Prague University in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the paper seeks to illuminate this underexposed regional aspect. The first phase of the reception of the Enquiry took place especially in Berlin immediately after its publication in London in 1757. The second phase can be located mainly in the northern maritime centres of German culture, particularly Königsberg, Riga, Hamburg as well as Copenhagen. Christian Garve’s translation, published anonymously by Hartknoch in Riga in 1773, and Kant’s Critique of Judgement (1790) constitute two peaks of north-German interest in Burke’s Enquiry. The intense reception of the Critique of Judgement within German aesthetics around and after 1800 subsequently led to the polemic with the British author becoming a part of Idealist interpretations for the next few decades. Outlining the three centres (and the three corresponding phases) of the German reception of Burke’s Enquiry begs the question which of them should be connected with Meißner’s remarks concerning Burke’s ideas. Leipzig is presented as another important German-language centre disseminating knowledge of Burke’s Enquiry, especially in the first half of the Seventies, moreover the decisive intermediary for the penetration of the Enquiry into the south-German Roman Catholic areas, Prague in particular.

This article compares the conception of “die schönen Wissenschaften” of the Prague professor Karl Heinrich Seibt (1735–1806), which he introduced in his inaugural lecture “Von dem Einflusse der schönen Wissenschaften auf die Ausbildung des Verstandes; und folglich von der Nothwendigkeit, sie mit den höhern und andern Wissenschaften zu verbinden” (1763), with similarly oriented essays of Georg Friedrich Meier, Christian Fürchtegott Gellert, and Johann Gottfried Gottsched. The comparison demonstrates that Seibt followed on from earlier defences of “die schönen Wissenschaften” presented at the more advanced Protestant universities. Seibt’s demand that the “higher sciences” (höhere Wissenschaften) should be linked with “die schönen Wissenschaften” was based on ideas that Gellert had touched upon in his inaugural lecture. An emphasis on the cognitive aspects links Seibt with Meier’s conception. This conception differed from Meier’s and Gottsched’s, however, in that Seibt, unlike the two professors, discussed the topic rhetorically rather than as systematic scholarly discourse.

Karl Heinrich Heydenreich a his Prospect of "Kantian" Aesthetics before the Critique of Judgment Dissertation Mgr. Antonín Policar Abstract The aim of my thesis is to provide an insight into the aesthetic thought of the German Enlightenment philosopher and professor at the Leipzig University Karl Heinrich Heydenreich (1764-1801). I will analyze his various attempts during the 1780s to adapt the German tradition of philosophical aesthetics to the newly emerging transcendental paradigm introduced to philosophy by Immanuel Kant. The main focus will be on the question if Heydenreich's aesthetic writings prior to 1790 can be justifiably considered (as it has been repeatedly, but without convincing arguments pointed out by historians of aesthetics) a predecessor, or even a parallel to Kant's Critique of Judgement.