＂阿摩尼阿斯·薩卡斯，活躍於公元3世紀來自亞歷山大港的一位哲學家，常被認為是新柏拉圖主義的創始人。他曾在232年至243年擔任政治家普羅提諾的老師，並因此而知名。
阿摩尼阿斯來自亞歷山大的布魯奇翁區，那是該城市的皇家區域，主要居住著希臘人，而“阿摩尼阿斯”是許多希臘人共有的名字，眾多學者和歷史學家支持阿摩尼阿斯的希臘血統。＂
"Ammonius Saccas (/əˈmoʊniəs/; Greek: Ἀμμώνιος Σακκᾶς; 175 AD – 243 AD) was a Hellenistic Platonist self-taught philosopher from Alexandria, generally regarded as the precursor of Neoplatonism and/or one of its founders. He is mainly known as the teacher of Plotinus, whom he taught from 232 to 243. He was undoubtedly the most significant influence on Plotinus in his development of Neoplatonism, although little is known about his own philosophical views. Later Christian writers stated that Ammonius was a Christian, but it is now generally assumed that there was a different Ammonius of Alexandria who wrote biblical texts.
The origins and meaning of Ammonius' cognomen, "Sakkas", are disputed. Many scholars have interpreted it as indicating he was a porter in his youth, a view supported in antiquity by Byzantine bishop Theodoret. Others have asserted that this is a misreading of "Sakkas" for "sakkophoros" (porter). Some others have connected the cognomen with the "Śākyas", an ancient ruling clan of India, claiming that Ammonius Saccas was of Indian origin. This view has both been subsequently contested and supported by more recent scholarship. Some scholars supporting Ammonius' Indian origin have also contended that this ancestry is consistent with the passion of his foremost student Plotinus for India, and helps to explain the philosophical similarities between Vedanta and neoplatonism, which many scholars attribute to Indian influence. On the other hand, scholars contesting his Indian origins point out that Ammonius was from the Brucheion quarter of Alexandria, which was the royal quarter of the city inhabited mostly by Greeks, and that the name "Ammonius" was common to many Greeks,[19] with a number of scholars and historians supporting a Greek origin for Ammonius. However, his name is theophoric to the deity Amun, indicating possible Egyptian origin.
Most details of Ammonius' life come from the fragments left from Porphyry's writings. The most famous pupil of Ammonius Saccas was Plotinus, who studied under Ammonius for eleven years. According to Porphyry, in 232, at the age of 28, Plotinus went to Alexandria to study philosophy:
In his twenty-eighth year he felt the impulse to study philosophy and was recommended to the teachers in Alexandria who then had the highest reputation; but he came away from their lectures so depressed and full of sadness that he told his trouble to one of his friends. The friend, understanding the desire of his heart, sent him to Ammonius, whom he had not so far tried. He went and heard him, and said to his friend, "This is the man I was looking for." From that day he stayed continually with Ammonius and acquired so complete a training in philosophy that he became eager to make acquaintance with the Persian philosophical discipline and that prevailing among the Indians.
According to Porphyry, the parents of Ammonius were Christians, but upon learning Greek philosophy, Ammonius rejected his parents' religion for paganism. This conversion is contested by the Christian writers Jerome and Eusebius, who state that Ammonius remained a Christian throughout his lifetime:
Plainly utters a falsehood (for what will not an opposer of Christians do?) when he says that ... Ammonius fell from a life of piety into heathen customs. ... Ammonius held the divine philosophy unshaken and unadulterated to the end of his life. His works yet extant show this, as he is celebrated among many for the writings which he has left.
However, we are told by Longinus that Ammonius wrote nothing, and if Ammonius was the principal influence on Plotinus, then it is unlikely that Ammonius would have been a Christian. One way to explain much of the confusion concerning Ammonius is to assume that there were two people called Ammonius: Ammonius Saccas who taught Plotinus, and an Ammonius the Christian who wrote biblical texts. Another explanation might be that there was only one Ammonius but that Origen, who found the Neo-Platonist views of his teacher essential to his own beliefs about the essential nature of Christianity, chose to suppress Ammonius' choice of Paganism over Christianity. The insistence of Eusebius, Origen's pupil, and Jerome, all of whom were recognized Fathers of the Christian Church, that Ammonius Saccas had not rejected his Christian roots would be easier for Christians to accept than the assertion of Porphyry, who was a Pagan, that Ammonius had chosen Paganism over Christianity.
To add to the confusion, it seems that Ammonius had two pupils called Origen: Origen the Christian, and Origen the Pagan. It is quite possible that Ammonius Saccas taught both Origens. And since there were two Origens who were accepted as contemporaries it was easy for later Christians to accept that there were two individuals named Ammonius, one a Christian and one a Pagan. Among Ammonius' other pupils there were Herennius and Cassius Longinus.
Hierocles, writing in the 5th century, states that Ammonius' fundamental doctrine was that Plato and Aristotle were in full agreement with each other:
He was the first who had a godly zeal for the truth in philosophy and despised the views of the majority, which were a disgrace to philosophy. He apprehended well the views of each of the two philosophers and brought them under one and the same nous and transmitted philosophy without conflicts to all of his disciples, and especially to the best of those acquainted with him, Plotinus, Origen, and their successors.
According to Nemesius, a bishop and neoplatonist c. 400, Ammonius held that the soul was immaterial.
Little is known about Ammonius's role in the development of neoplatonism. Porphyry seems to suggest that Ammonius was instrumental in helping Plotinus think about philosophy in new ways:
But he did not just speak straight out of these books but took a distinctive personal line in his consideration, and brought the mind of Ammonius' to bear on the investigation in hand.
Two of Ammonius's students – Origen the Pagan, and Longinus – seem to have held philosophical positions which were closer to middle Platonism than neoplatonism, which perhaps suggests that Ammonius's doctrines were also closer to those of middle Platonism than the neoplatonism developed by Plotinus (see the Enneads), but Plotinus does not seem to have thought that he was departing in any significant way from that of his master. Like Porphyry (The Life of Plotinus, 3, 24–29), also Nemesius refers of Ammonius Saccas as the teacher or the master of Plotinus (Nemesius, Nature of Man, 2.103)."
阿摩尼阿斯的別名“薩卡斯”的起源和含義有爭議。許多學者解釋它表示他年輕時是一名搬運工，這一觀點在古代被拜占庭主教西奧多雷特支持。其他人則認為這是對“薩卡斯”（意為搬運工）的誤讀。還有一些人將這個別名與印度的古老統治集團“夏基族”聯繫起來，聲稱阿摩尼阿斯·薩卡斯有印度血統。這一觀點隨後既受到爭議也得到了更多近代學術的支持。一些支持阿摩尼阿斯具有印度血統的學者還提出，這一血統與他最著名的學生普羅提諾對印度的熱情一致，並有助於解釋維丹塔哲學和新柏拉圖主義之間的哲學相似性，許多學者將其歸因於印度的影響。另一方面，質疑他印度血統的學者指出，阿摩尼阿斯來自亞歷山大的布魯奇翁區，那是該城市的皇家區域，主要居住著希臘人，而“阿摩尼阿斯”是許多希臘人共有的名字，眾多學者和歷史學家支持阿摩尼阿斯的希臘血統。然而，他的名字是以神明阿蒙為神名的，顯示可能的埃及血統。
阿摩尼阿斯生平的大部分細節來自波菲利的作品碎片。阿摩尼阿斯·薩卡斯最著名的學生是普羅提諾，他在阿摩尼阿斯學習了十一年。根據波菲利的描述，公元232年時，28歲的普羅提諾前往亞歷山大尋求哲學學習：
＂在普羅提諾二十八歲那年，他感到了學習哲學的衝動，並被推薦給當時聲譽最高的亞歷山大的老師們；但他從他們的講座中走出來時感到極度沮喪和滿懷悲傷，以至於他向其中一個朋友傾訴了自己的困擾。
朋友了解他內心的渴望，就把他介紹給了阿摩尼阿斯·薩卡斯，他在此之前還沒有聽說過這個人。
但在他前去聽了他的講座後，對他的朋友說：“這就是我一直在尋找的人。”
從那天起，他一直與阿摩尼阿斯·薩卡斯待在一起，並在哲學上接受了如此完整的訓練，以至於他渴望認識波斯的哲學學科以及印度人中流行的哲學學科。＂
根據波菲里（Porphyry）的說法，阿摩尼阿斯的父母是基督徒，但在學習了希臘哲學後，阿摩尼阿斯放棄了父母的宗教信仰，轉向了異教。
然而，基督教作家傑羅姆（Jerome）和尤西比烏斯（Eusebius）對這種轉變提出了質疑，認為阿摩尼阿斯一生都保持著基督教信仰：
＂毫無疑問地說，當阿摩尼阿斯墮入了異教的習俗時（因為反基督教者能做出什麼呢？），他是在說謊...阿摩尼阿斯始終堅守著純正無瑕的神聖哲學，直到他生命的盡頭。他尚存的作品顯示了這一點，因為他在許多人中因他留下的著作而聞名。＂
然而，隆基努斯告訴我們阿摩尼阿斯·薩卡斯並無著作，如果他是普羅提諾主要的影響力，那麼他不大可能是一名基督徒。解釋有關阿摩尼阿斯混亂情況的一種方式是假定有兩個叫做阿摩尼阿斯的人：教導普羅提諾的阿摩尼阿斯·薩卡斯，以及寫聖經文本的基督徒阿摩尼阿斯。另一種解釋可能是只有一個阿摩尼阿斯，但是奧利根將他老師的新柏拉圖主義觀點視為其對基督教本質信仰的根本，選擇壓制了阿摩尼阿斯對異教超過基督教的選擇。對於奧利根的學生優西比烏斯以及耶柔米等公認的基督教教父堅稱阿摩尼阿斯·薩卡斯並未拒絕他的基督教根源，對基督徒來說比接受異教徒波菲利的斷言，即阿摩尼阿斯選擇了異教超過基督教，要容易接受。
為了增加混亂，看來阿摩尼阿斯有兩名名叫奧利根的學生：基督徒奧利根和異教徒奧利根。 阿摩尼阿斯·薩卡斯教導兩個奧利根都是有可能的。 並且由於兩個奧利根被當代接受，後來的基督徒很容易接受有兩位名叫阿摩尼阿斯的個體，一個是基督徒，另一個是異教徒。 在阿摩尼阿斯其他的學生中，還有赫倫尼烏斯和卡西烏斯·隆基努斯。
五世紀的希羅克萊斯指出，阿摩尼阿斯的基本教義認為柏拉圖和亞里士多德的看法完全一致：
＂他是第一個對哲學中的真理懷有敬神之心的人，蔑視多數人的觀點，這些觀點對哲學是一種恥辱。他深刻理解了兩位哲學家的觀點，將它們融合到同一個智慧之中，將哲學毫無爭議地傳授給他所有的門徒，尤其是對他有所了解的最優秀的門徒，包括普羅提諾（Plotinus）、奧利根（Origen）和他們的繼承者。＂
根據公元400年的主教和新柏拉圖主義者奈美修斯（Nemesius）的說法，阿摩尼阿斯認為靈魂是無形的。關於阿摩尼阿斯在新柏拉圖主義發展中的角色所知甚少。波菲里似乎暗示阿摩尼阿斯在幫助普羅提諾以新的方式思考哲學方面發揮了關鍵作用。
＂但他不僅僅是直接引用這些書籍，而是在考慮中採取了獨特的個人立場，並將阿摩尼阿斯的思想引入到正在進行的研究中。＂
阿摩尼阿斯·薩卡斯的兩位學生——異教徒奧利根和隆基努斯——似乎持有更貼近中期柏拉圖主義而非由普羅提諾發展的新柏拉圖主義的哲學立場，這或許表明阿摩尼阿斯的教義也更接近於中期柏拉圖主義而非普羅提諾在《論篇》中發展的新柏拉圖主義，但普羅提諾並不認為他的教義與他的老師有任何重大的偏離。就像波菲利（《普羅提諾生平》3, 24–29）一樣，涅美修斯也提及阿摩尼阿斯·薩卡斯是普羅提諾的老師或主人（涅美修斯，《人的本性》2.103）。