James Elliot Cabot
Born(1821-06-18)June 18, 1821
Boston, Massachusetts
DiedJanuary 16, 1903(1903-01-16) (aged 81)
Brookline, Massachusetts
EducationHarvard Law School
Occupation(s)Philosopher, author
Spouse
Elizabeth Dwight
​
(m. 1857)​
Children5, including Richard Clarke Cabot
Parent
FamilyCabot family
Signature

James Elliot Cabot (June 18, 1821 – January 16, 1903)[1] was an American philosopher and author, born in Boston to Samuel Cabot Jr., and Eliza Cabot.

Education and career

Having received his bachelor's degree from Harvard Law School in 1845, Elliot started a law firm.[2]

He taught philosophy at Harvard and was a transcendentalist and edited the Massachusetts Quarterly Review, beginning in 1848. Cabot was a correspondent of Henry David Thoreau.

Views and publications

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.[3]

His 2-volume biography of Ralph Waldo Emerson was criticized for its lack of color.[4] According to the review in The Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science, and Art, Cabot "gives abundant materials for forming, correcting, or filling up an idea of Emerson's character, but comparatively little information about the events of a life which appears, indeed, to have been very uneventful."[5]

Family

Cabot and his wife Elizabeth had five sons, the most notable of them being Richard Clarke Cabot (1868–1939), a physician who advanced clinical hematology, was an innovator in teaching methods, and a pioneer in social work.[6]

References

  1. ↑ Higginson, T. W.. 1904. "James Elliot Cabot". Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 39 (24). American Academy of Arts & Sciences: 649–55.
  2. ↑ Waldo Emerson, Edward (1967). The Early Years of the Saturday Club. Ayer Publishing. p. 264.
  3. ↑ Richardson, Robert D. (September 14, 2007). William James: In the Maelstrom of American Modernism: a Biography. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. p. 197. ISBN 978-0-618-91989-5. James Elliot Cabot.
  4. ↑ 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.
  5. ↑ "Review of Memoir of Ralph Waldo Emerson by James Elliot Cabot". The Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science, and Art. 64 (1673): 708. November 19, 1887.
  6. ↑ "Cabot, Richard C. (Richard Clarke), 1868–1939. Papers of Richard Clarke Cabot : an inventory," Archived January 2, 2016, at the Wayback Machine Harvard University archives. Accessed January 5, 2016.
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