Bernard of Chartres ( la, Bernardus Carnotensis; died after 1124) was a twelfth-century French Neo-Platonist

philosopher A philosopher is a person who practices or investigates philosophy. The term ''philosopher'' comes from the grc, φιλόσοφος, , translit=philosophos, meaning 'lover of wisdom'. The coining of the term has been attributed to the Greek th ...

, scholar, and administrator.

Life

The date and place of his birth are unknown. He was believed to have been the elder brother of Thierry of Chartres and to be of Breton origin, but research has shown that this is unlikely. He is recorded at the cathedral school of Chartres by 1115 and was chancellor until 1124. There is no proof that he was still alive after 1124.

Contemporary accounts

Gilbert de la Porrée Gilbert de la Porrée (after 1085 – 4 September 1154), also known as Gilbert of Poitiers, Gilbertus Porretanus or Pictaviensis, was a scholastic logician and theologian and Bishop of Poitiers. Life He was born in Poitiers, and completed h ...

and

William of Conches William of Conches (c. 1090/1091 – c. 1155/1170s) was a French scholastic philosopher who sought to expand the bounds of Christian humanism by studying secular works of the classics and fostering empirical science. He was a prominent membe ...

were students of his, and some information about his work comes through their writings, as well as the writings of

John of Salisbury John of Salisbury (late 1110s – 25 October 1180), who described himself as Johannes Parvus ("John the Little"), was an English author, philosopher, educationalist, diplomat and bishop of Chartres. Early life and education Born at Salisbury, E ...

. According to John of Salisbury, Bernard composed a prose treatise ''De expositione Porphyrii'', a metrical treatise on the same subject, a moral poem on education, and probably a fourth work in which he sought to reconcile Plato with Aristotle. Fragments of these treatises are to be found in John's ''Metalogicon'' (IV, 35) and ''Policraticus'' (VII, 3). Hauréau''Catholic Encyclopedia'', I, 408 confounds Bernard of Chartres with Bernardus Silvestris, and assigns to the former works which are to be ascribed to the latter. The earliest attribution of the phrase "

standing on the shoulders of giants The phrase "standing on the shoulders of giants" is a metaphor which means "using the understanding gained by major thinkers who have gone before in order to make intellectual progress". It is a metaphor of dwarfs standing on the shoulders o ...

" is to Bernard (by

Doctrines

Bernard, in common with others of his school, devoted more attention to the study of the '' Timaeus'' and the works of the Neo-Platonists than to the study of the dialectical treatises of

Aristotle Aristotle (; grc-gre, Ἀριστοτέλης ''Aristotélēs'', ; 384–322 BC) was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. Taught by Plato, he was the founder of the Peripatetic school of ...

and the commentaries of

Boethius Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius, commonly known as Boethius (; Latin: ''Boetius''; 480 – 524 AD), was a Roman senator, consul, '' magister officiorum'', historian, and philosopher of the Early Middle Ages. He was a central figure in the ...

. Consequently, he not only discussed the problem of

universals In metaphysics, a universal is what particular things have in common, namely characteristics or qualities. In other words, universals are repeatable or recurrent entities that can be instantiated or exemplified by many particular things. For exa ...

(distinguishing between the abstract, the process, and the concrete—exemplified, for instance, by the Latin words ''albedo'', ''albet'', and ''album'') but also occupied himself with problems of

metaphysics Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that studies the fundamental nature of reality, the first principles of being, identity and change, space and time, causality, necessity, and possibility. It includes questions about the nature of consci ...

and

cosmology Cosmology () is a branch of physics and metaphysics dealing with the nature of the universe. The term ''cosmology'' was first used in English in 1656 in Thomas Blount's ''Glossographia'', and in 1731 taken up in Latin by German philosopher ...

Metaphysics

According to Bernard, there are three categories of reality: God, matter, and idea. God is supreme reality. Matter was brought out of nothingness by God's creative act and is the element which, in union with Ideas, constitutes the world of sensible things. Ideas are the prototypes by means of which the world was from all eternity present to the Divine Mind; they constitute the world of Providence ("in qua omnia semel et simul fecit Deus"), and are eternal but not coeternal with God. According to John of Salisbury, Bernard also taught that there exist native forms—copies of the Ideas created with matter—which are alone united with matter. It is difficult, however, to determine what was Bernard's doctrine on this point. It is sufficient to note that he reproduced in his metaphysical doctrines many of the characteristic traits of

Platonism Platonism is the philosophy of Plato and philosophical systems closely derived from it, though contemporary platonists do not necessarily accept all of the doctrines of Plato. Platonism had a profound effect on Western thought. Platonism at le ...

and Neo-Platonism: the intellect as the habitat of

Ideas In common usage and in philosophy, ideas are the results of thought. Also in philosophy, ideas can also be mental representational images of some object. Many philosophers have considered ideas to be a fundamental ontological category of being. ...

, the world-soul, eternal

matter In classical physics and general chemistry, matter is any substance that has mass and takes up space by having volume. All everyday objects that can be touched are ultimately composed of atoms, which are made up of interacting subatomic parti ...

, matter as the source of imperfection, etc.

Cosmology

Bernard argued that matter, although caused by God, existed from all eternity. In the beginning, before its union with the Ideas, it was in a chaotic condition. It was by means of the native forms, which penetrate matter, that distinction, order, regularity, and number were introduced into the universe.

Glosses on Plato's ''Timaeus''

Paul Edward Dutton has shown that a set of anonymous glosses on Plato's ''Timaeus'' must be attributed to Bernard. These glosses edited by Dutton are Bernard's only extant work.

Editions

* ''The Glosae super Platonem of Bernard of Chartres'', edited with an introduction by Paul Edward Dutton, Toronto 1991.

References

Sources

* *