HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

Bernard of Chartres (; died after 1124) was a twelfth-century French Neo-Platonist
philosopher Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, Value (ethics and social sciences), value, mind, and language. It is a rational an ...
, scholar, and administrator.


Life

The date and place of his birth are unknown. He was previously 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 and William of Conches were students of his, and their writings reference his work, as do the writings of John of Salisbury. According to the latter, Bernard composed a prose treatise named ''De expositione Porphyrii'', a metrical treatise on the same subject, a moral poem on education, and probably a fourth work seeking to reconcile Plato and Aristotle. Fragments of these treatises are 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 Dwarf (mythology), dwarfs standing on ...
" is to Bernard (by John of Salisbury):


Doctrines

Bernard, like others of his school, studied the '' Timaeus'' and the Neo-Platonists more than
Aristotle Aristotle (; 384–322 BC) was an Ancient Greek philosophy, Ancient Greek philosopher and polymath. His writings cover a broad range of subjects spanning the natural sciences, philosophy, linguistics, economics, politics, psychology, a ...
's dialectical treatises and Boethius's commentaries. 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 addressed problems of
metaphysics Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that examines the basic structure of reality. It is traditionally seen as the study of mind-independent features of the world, but some theorists view it as an inquiry into the conceptual framework of ...
and
cosmology Cosmology () is a branch of physics and metaphysics dealing with the nature of the universe, the cosmos. The term ''cosmology'' was first used in English in 1656 in Thomas Blount's ''Glossographia'', with the meaning of "a speaking of the wo ...
.


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 doctrines of Plato. Platonism has had a profound effect on Western thought. At the most fundam ...
and Neo-Platonism: the intellect as the habitat of Ideas, 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 pa ...
, 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

* *


Further reading

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Bernard Of Chartres 12th-century French philosophers Scholastic philosophers 1120s deaths Year of birth unknown 12th-century French writers French male writers 12th-century writers in Latin Latin commentators on Plato