"Quid, quis et qualis est?" : o socratismo cristão na obra De Consideratione (1149-1152) de São Bernardo de Claraval (1090-1153)

Abstract

There is no wonder the twelfth century be considered the "Saint Bernard"s century": being Abbot of Clairvaux, there was no schism or theological-philosophical dispute in the Church in which his influence was not crucial. In his last work, De Consideratione (1152), the admonition that he transmited to his order fellow and pupil Pier Bernardo Pignatelli, elected Pope Eugene III (1145-1153), figured as a warning about how he was supposed to taking care of the transcendental life according to the magnitude of his office. Having exposed the four objects of consideration, "te", "quae sub te," "quae circa te," "quae supra te", Saint Bernard ratified that his intention was also meditate about aspects of the person of Eugene on three questions: "'quid','quis' et 'qualis est"?". However, although Saint Bernard be usually recognized by the scholars as a radical man against Dialetic, due to the quarrel of dialetics and antidialetics of the XII century, the philosophical resources that he uses in the De Consideratione, and had already showed in other works, permits us to understand his approach with Philosophy beneath a more positive perspective. This change, at last, culminates in the De Consideratione in Christian-Socratics reflections about the need that the man has to know himself. Finally, we aimed in this work to analyze the nosce teipsum (know thyself) Socratic of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux that, permeating all the work, also follows the considerations about the world and God.