MY BELOVED IS MINE AND I AM HIS: SELF-KNOWLEDGE IN THE ...

Adam and Eve to aspire to be gods on their own and now in consequence swells in the
hearts of all their descendents. In the mind of the proud monk, the desire to be, and to be
seen to be, holier than all his brothers swells to such intensity that he gradually begins to
believe that he in fact is what he so longs to be, holier than everyone else. Love, Bernard
observes, and most especially this misguided self-love, is never a sound basis for correct
judgment. Referring to the legal practice of his time, he notes that in both ecclesiastical
and secular courts, close friends of the litigants are not permitted to judge their friends’
case for fear that their love of their friends will bias their judgment. If one’s love for
one’s friends moves one to overlook or even to conceal their guilt, how much more,
Bernard asks, will the monk’s self-love deceive his judgment of himself?
Bernard’s analogy underscores an essential theme of his teaching on self-
knowledge and self-deception: the truth, including the truth about oneself, is never a
matter of one’s own making, nor can it ever be discerned apart from the God who himself
is Truth. To find the Truth in oneself is, in Bernard’s expression, “to find oneself in the
Truth,” 163 to see oneself through the eyes of Truth, “which can neither deceive nor be
deceived.” 164 The proud may judge themselves in accordance with their own self-love,
but the alleged self-knowledge this judgment brings is nothing more than a self-deception
because it is a judgment made apart from and devoid of the Truth.
Just as the monk’s excessive self-love distorts his perception and judgment of
himself, it likewise distorts his perceptions and judgments of those around him.
Regarding his brothers through the lens of his desire to excel, he comes to see only their
163 Hum 15 (III, 27): “veritate inventa in se, immo se invento in in veritate.”
164 Hum 3 (III, 18): “Veritas, cuius oculi sicut fallere nolunt, ita falli non norunt.”
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