Bernard of Chartres

Bernard of Chartres (Latin: Bernardus Carnotensis; died after 1124) was a twelfth-century French Neo-Platonist philosopher, scholar, and administrator.

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.

Gilbert de la Porrée and William of Conches were students of his, and some information about his work comes through their writings, as well as the writings of John of Salisbury. 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 confounds Bernard of Chartres with Bernard 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" is to Bernard (by John of Salisbury):

Bernard of Chartres used to say that we [the Moderns] are like dwarves perched on the shoulders of giants [the Ancients], and thus we are able to see more and farther than the latter. And this is not at all because of the acuteness of our sight or the stature of our body, but because we are carried aloft and elevated by the magnitude of the giants.

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 Aristotle's dialectical treatises and the commentaries of Boethius. Consequently, he not only discussed the problem of universals (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 and cosmology.

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