Due to the success of my bachelor’s thesis, I received a private commission to collaborate with Alexander Weil, who worked closely for many years as a cinematographer and interviewer with Alexander Kluge. The assignment was to produce a video on the theory of the comic (from Aristotle to Lessing) based on a text by Weil.

Previous theories of the comic describe moments that can be funny, but do not necessarily have to be—superiority (Hobbes), relief (often derived from Freud), and incongruity (Kant). But what is inherent to the comic; what is the differentia specifica of the comic action? In his treatise, Weil raises the question of the differentia specifica of comic action. By investigating Lessing’s question regarding the reason for the typification of characters in comedy in his Hamburg Dramaturgy, and by drawing on theories from Aristotle and Hegel, we arrive at a theory of comic action based on Lessing that has been previously overlooked.

In this project, I not only had the opportunity to visualize and animate Weil’s treatise, but also to work alongside Alexander Weil to transform a philosophical treatise of more than 200 pages into a 30-minute video, and—as in my bachelor’s and master’s theses—to perform the narration for this text.