In 1994, Stanford University Press published an English translation by Elizabeth Rottenberg as part of the series Meridian: Crossing Aesthetics.

[2] The book received positive reviews from Thomas Huhn in Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism and A. T. Nuyen in Philosophy of the Social Sciences.

[3][4] Huhn described the book as "brilliant", writing that Lyotard provided a "provocative reading of Kant's doctrine of the sublime".

[4] Peter Fenves praised Lyotard for posing the "question of the subject of aesthetic judgment" with "renewed vigor".

[5] The philosopher Alan D. Schrift suggested that Lessons on the Analytic of the Sublime is Lyotard's most important work since The Differend (1983).