Vischer and aesthetics

"On the sublime and the ridiculous"

Even during his time as a student, Vischer had been more fascinated by the subjects of philosophy, aesthetics and literature than by theology. In 1837 he completed his post-doctoral thesis, entitled “On the sublime and the ridiculous”, in which he expanded on Hegel's philosophy.
Yet Vischer wanted to demonstrate that the sublime and the ridiculous were not historical transitional forms, as in Hegel's works, but were aspects of beauty itself. To him, beauty was a sensual apparition, an image of a specific idea. Taking a somewhat idiosyncratic approach to the dialectical method, Vischer showed how an idea can extend beyond an image, become sublime in its infiniteness and ultimately be transformed into the ridiculous.