The article analyzes the aesthetic views of Friedrich Hölderlin, and, first, his understanding of the categories of the Beautiful and Sublime. Particular attention is paid to the comparison of Hölderlin's views with the aesthetic teachings of Plato and Immanuel Kant, who had a great influence on the German poet. The author of the article concludes that Hölderlin sought to unite the Platonian and Kantian understanding of beauty, seeing the similarity between the concepts of Plato and Kant in the

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... question of the source of the beautiful. The central for aesthetics of Hölderlin was the problem of combining the spheres of aesthetic and ethical, to solve which he relied on the idea of Kant about beautiful as a symbol of the moral good and the Teaching of Plato on the climbing of the soul to the Good. Hölderlin pays less attention to the theoretical development of the category of the Sublime than to the comprehension of the category of the Beautiful, however, in his writings, the Sublime is present implicitly, and Hölderlin's understanding of this category is close, on the one hand, to Platonian, bringing together the Beautiful and the Sublime, and, on the other, to Kantian understanding, which brings the Sublime together with the idea of infinity, God and the sphere of morality. The conclusions to which Hölderlin comes, are far from Platonism, and from Kantianism. The poet concludes about the central and leading role of poetry and poetic gift in the knowledge of the world, which should be aesthetic. This indicates a romantic way to interpret Hölderlin's aesthetic concepts of Plato and Kant.