Bernard of Chartres (Latin:Bernardus Carnotensis; died after 1124) was a twelfth-centuryFrenchNeo-Platonistphilosopher, scholar, and administrator.

The date and place of his birth are unknown. He was previously believed to have been the elder brother ofThierry of Chartres and to be ofBreton origin, but research has shown that this is unlikely.^[1] He is recorded at thecathedral school of Chartres by 1115 and was chancellor until 1124. There is no proof that he was still alive after 1124.^[2]

Gilbert de la Porrée andWilliam of Conches were students of his, and their writings reference his work, as do the writings ofJohn of Salisbury. According to the latter, Bernard composed a prose treatise namedDe 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'sMetalogicon (IV, 35) andPolicraticus (VII, 3).^[3]Hauréau^[4] confounds Bernard of Chartres withBernardus 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 (byJohn 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.^[5]

Bernard, like others of his school, studied theTimaeus and the Neo-Platonists more thanAristotle'sdialectical treatises andBoethius's commentaries. Consequently, he not only discussed the problem ofuniversals (distinguishing between the abstract, the process, and the concrete—exemplified, for instance, by the Latin wordsalbedo,albet, andalbum) but also addressed problems ofmetaphysics andcosmology.

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 theDivine Mind; they constitute the world ofProvidence ("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 ofPlatonism and Neo-Platonism: the intellect as the habitat ofIdeas, theworld-soul, eternalmatter, matter as the source of imperfection, etc.

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.

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

• The Glosae super Platonem of Bernard of Chartres, edited with an introduction by Paul Edward Dutton, Toronto 1991.ISBN 0-88844-107-X

• Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911)."Bernard of Chartres" .Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 3 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
• Turner, William (1912)."Bernard Sylvester" . In Herbermann, Charles (ed.).Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 14. New York: Robert Appleton Company.

• Jeauneau, Edouard (1970). "Bernard of Chartres".Dictionary of Scientific Biography. Vol. 2. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. pp. 19–20.ISBN 0-684-10114-9.

• 12th-century French philosophers
• Scholastic philosophers
• 1120s deaths
• 12th-century French writers
• French male writers
• 12th-century writers in Latin
• Latin commentators on Plato

• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata
• Articles containing Latin-language text
• Wikipedia articles incorporating a citation from the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica with Wikisource reference
• Articles incorporating a citation from the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia with Wikisource reference
• Year of birth unknown