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San Bernardo di Chiaravalle come simbolo dell’autoconoscenza nella lettura platonica della “Divina Commedia”

Summary: This article sets out to interpret the personage of St. Bernard of Clairvaux as a symbol of self-knowledge, within a metaphysical interpretation - of a Platonic kind - of the Divine Comedy. The Divine Comedy, interpreted in terms of its metaphysical significance, represents a progressive itinerary of coming to know the foundations of reality in general and of the human being in particular, both in relation to the good and to virtue and in relation to evil and sin. It is within such an itinerary of metaphysical knowing of the principles of being, that we show how there comes about a process of self-knowing, in accordance with the fundamental message of the Platonic tradition, in which knowledge by the human being of the foundations of reality, inasmuch as it is knowledge of his own origins, accompanies a process of self-knowledge, gnothi seauton. The personage of St. Bernard of Clairvaux, on account of the role that it plays in the mediaeval tradition and in the “economy”of Dante’s work, can be interpreted as the symbol of this supreme union between the human being’s knowledge of the foundations of being and his knowledge of himself, accompanying Dante into the contemplation of the One and Triune God, in which there is the archetype of humanity itself, thefundamental Truth of the human being.