James Elliot Cabot

James Elliot Cabot

James Elliot Cabot (June 18, 1821 – 1903) was an American philosopher and author, born in Boston.

Having received his Bachelor's degree from Harvard Law School in 1845, he started a law firm.[1]

He taught Philosophy at Harvard and was a transcendentalist and edited the Massachusetts Quarterly Review, beginning in 1848.

Cabot argued that we do not experience space directly, that space is "a system of relations, it cannot be given in any one sensation. [...] Space is a symbol of the general relatedness of objects constructed by thought from data which lie below consciousness." Cabot was of the opinion that the position of something in space was not felt at all, but deduced from perceived relations.[2]

Cabot was a correspondent of Henry David Thoreau.

His biography of Ralph Waldo Emerson was criticized for its lack of colour.[3]

References

  1. ↑ Waldo Emerson, Edward. The Early Years of the Saturday Club. Ayer Publishing. p. 264.
  2. ↑ Richardson, Robert D. (2007-09-14). William James: In the Maelstrom of American Modernism: a Biography. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. ISBN 0-618-91989-9.
  3. ↑ Nancy Craig Simmons (1983). "Arranging the Sibylline Leaves: James Elliot Cabot's Work as Emerson's Literary Executor". Studies in the American Renaissance: 335–389.

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