제임스의 물자체와 에밀 샤를 랑비네

Abstract

As Arthur Schopenhauer initiated, thing-in-itself which is essential to the world, the true content of its phenomena is the subject of art, the work of genius that recognizes and represents the innermost essence of every particular thing. Through the pure contemplation of ourselves as pure, will-less subjects of knowing, we can recognize in the object of knowing not its mere appearance or phenomenon, but the inner nature as thing-in-itself. Henry James who believed that the novelist as an artist should catch the colour of life, kept emphasizing and developing the importance of art that recognizes and represents the thing-in-itself as the essence of life. His protagonist Lewis Lambert Strether in The Ambassadors lives in large measure by his impressionist eyes, but eventually develops his painter’s eyes into the original characteristics of Émile Charles Lambinet’s landscape. Lambinet’s landscape that is original in its coexistence of countrysides’s views and figures, guides Strether to move through the exquisite superficial play of light and air around the figures and objects. Through the long-lasting repetitive reflection of the Lambinet’s landscape that no longer lets him stop at the phenomenon, Strether is led on to the thing-in-itself, the phase of Idea.