Plotinus - 普羅提諾

＂普羅提諾是一位在羅馬埃及出生和長大的希臘柏拉圖派哲學家，一部分現代學術認為普羅提諾是新柏拉圖主義的創始人。他的老師是自學成才的哲學家阿摩尼阿斯·薩卡斯，屬於柏拉圖主義傳統。19世紀的歷史學家發明了“新柏拉圖主義”一詞，用以指稱普羅提諾及其哲學，該哲學在晚古代、中世紀和文藝復興時期有巨大影響力。＂

"Plotinus (/plɒˈtaɪnəs/; Greek: Πλωτῖνος, Plōtînos; c. 204/5 – 270 CE) was a Greek Platonist philosopher, born and raised in Roman Egypt. Plotinus is regarded by modern scholarship as the founder of Neoplatonism. His teacher was the self-taught philosopher Ammonius Saccas, who belonged to the Platonic tradition. Historians of the 19th century invented the term "neoplatonism" and applied it to refer to Plotinus and his philosophy, which was vastly influential during late antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance. Much of the biographical information about Plotinus comes from Porphyry's preface to his edition of Plotinus' most notable literary work, The Enneads. In his metaphysical writings, Plotinus described three fundamental principles: the One, the Intellect, and the Soul. His works have inspired centuries of pagan, Jewish, Christian, Gnostic, and early Islamic metaphysicians and mystics, including developing precepts that influence mainstream theological concepts within religions, such as his work on duality of the One in two metaphysical states.

Plotinus taught that there is a supreme, totally transcendent "One", containing no division, multiplicity, or distinction; beyond all categories of being and non-being. His "One" "cannot be any existing thing", nor is it merely the sum of all things (compare the Stoic doctrine of disbelief in non-material existence), but "is prior to all existents". Plotinus identified his "One" with the concept of 'Good' and the principle of 'Beauty'. (I.6.9)

His "One" concept encompassed thinker and object. Even the self-contemplating intelligence (the noesis of the nous) must contain duality. "Once you have uttered 'The Good,' add no further thought: by any addition, and in proportion to that addition, you introduce a deficiency." (III.8.11) Plotinus denies sentience, self-awareness or any other action (ergon) to the One (τὸ Ἕν, to hen; V.6.6). Rather, if we insist on describing it further, we must call the One a sheer potentiality (dynamis) without which nothing could exist. (III.8.10) As Plotinus explains in both places and elsewhere (e.g. V.6.3), it is impossible for the One to be Being or a self-aware Creator God. At (V.6.4), Plotinus compared the One to "light", the Divine Intellect/Nous (Νοῦς, Nous; first will towards Good) to the "Sun", and lastly the Soul (Ψυχή, Psyche) to the "Moon" whose light is merely a "derivative conglomeration of light from the 'Sun'". The first light could exist without any celestial body.

The One, being beyond all attributes including being and non-being, is the source of the world—but not through any act of creation, since activity cannot be ascribed to the unchangeable, immutable One. Plotinus argues instead that the multiple cannot exist without the simple. The "less perfect" must, of necessity, "emanate", or issue forth, from the "perfect" or "more perfect". Thus, all of "creation" emanates from the One in succeeding stages of lesser and lesser perfection. These stages are not temporally isolated, but occur throughout time as a constant process.

The One is not just an intellectual concept but something that can be experienced, an experience where one goes beyond all multiplicity. Plotinus writes, "We ought not even to say that he will see, but he will be that which he sees, if indeed it is possible any longer to distinguish between seer and seen, and not boldly to affirm that the two are one."

For several centuries after the Protestant Reformation, neoplatonism was condemned as a decadent and 'oriental' distortion of Platonism. In a 1929 essay, E. R. Dodds showed that key conceptions of neoplatonism could be traced from their origin in Plato's dialogues, through his immediate followers (e.g., Speusippus) and the neopythagoreans, to Plotinus and the neoplatonists. Thus Plotinus' philosophy was, he argued, 'not the starting-point of neoplatonism but its intellectual culmination.'[30] Further research reinforced this view and by 1954 Merlan could say 'The present tendency is toward bridging rather than widening the gap separating Platonism from neoplatonism.'

Since the 1950s, the Tübingen School of Plato interpretation has argued that the so-called 'unwritten doctrines' of Plato debated by Aristotle and the Old Academy strongly resemble Plotinus's metaphysics. In this case, the neoplatonic reading of Plato would be, at least in this central area, historically justified. This implies that neoplatonism is less of an innovation than it appears without the recognition of Plato's unwritten doctrines. Advocates of the Tübingen School emphasize this advantage of their interpretation. They see Plotinus as advancing a tradition of thought begun by Plato himself. Plotinus's metaphysics, at least in broad outline, was therefore already familiar to the first generation of Plato's students. This confirms Plotinus' own view, for he considered himself not the inventor of a system but the faithful interpreter of Plato's doctrines.

At least two modern conferences within Hellenic philosophy fields of study have been held in order to address what Plotinus stated in his tract Against the Gnostics and to whom he was addressing it, in order to separate and clarify the events and persons involved in the origin of the term "Gnostic". From the dialogue, it appears that the word had an origin in the Platonic and Hellenistic tradition long before the group calling themselves "Gnostics"—or the group covered under the modern term "Gnosticism"—ever appeared. It would seem that this shift from Platonic to Gnostic usage has led many people to confusion. The strategy of sectarians taking Greek terms from philosophical contexts and re-applying them to religious contexts was popular in Christianity, the Cult of Isis and other ancient religious contexts including Hermetic ones (see Alexander of Abonutichus for an example).

According to A. H. Armstrong, Plotinus and the neoplatonists viewed Gnosticism as a form of heresy or sectarianism to the Pythagorean and Platonic philosophy of the Mediterranean and Middle East. Also according to Armstrong, Plotinus accused them of using senseless jargon and being overly dramatic and insolent in their distortion of Plato's ontology." Armstrong argues that Plotinus attacks his opponents as untraditional, irrational and immoral and arrogant.Armstrong believed that Plotinus also attacks them as elitist and blasphemous to Plato for the Gnostics despising the material world and its maker.

The neoplatonic movement (though Plotinus would have simply referred to himself as a philosopher of Plato) seems to be motivated by the desire of Plotinus to revive the pagan philosophical tradition. Plotinus was not claiming to innovate with the Enneads, but to clarify aspects of the works of Plato that he considered misrepresented or misunderstood. Plotinus does not claim to be an innovator, but rather a communicator of a tradition. Plotinus referred to tradition as a way to interpret Plato's intentions. Because the teachings of Plato were for members of the academy rather than the general public, it was easy for outsiders to misunderstand Plato's meaning. However, Plotinus attempted to clarify how the philosophers of the academy had not arrived at the same conclusions (such as misotheism or dystheism of the creator God as an answer to the problem of evil) as the targets of his criticism.

普羅提諾（希臘語：Πλωτῖνος，Plōtînos；大約204/5年－270年）是一位在羅馬埃及出生和長大的希臘柏拉圖派哲學家。現代學術認為普羅提諾是新柏拉圖主義的創始人。他的老師是自學成才的哲學家阿摩尼阿斯·薩卡斯，屬於柏拉圖主義傳統。19世紀的歷史學家發明了“新柏拉圖主義”一詞，用以指稱普羅提諾及其哲學，該哲學在晚古代、中世紀和文藝復興時期有巨大影響力。關於普羅提諾的大部分傳記信息來自波菲利對普羅提諾最著名的文學作品《論篇》版的序言。在他的形而上學著作中，普羅提諾描述了三個基本原理：一者（the One），理智（the Intellect）和靈魂（the Soul）。他的作品激勵了數個世紀的異教徒、猶太人、基督徒、諾斯底派人士以及早期伊斯蘭形而上學家和神秘主義者，包括發展出影響宗教內主流神學概念的前提，例如他關於一者在兩個形而上狀態中的二元性的工作。

普羅提諾教導說，有一個至高無上的、完全超越的“一”，不包含任何劃分、多重性或區別。超越所有存在與非存在的範疇。他的“一”“不可能是任何存在物”，也不僅僅是所有事物的總和（對比斯多葛派不相信非物質存在的學說），而是“先於一切存在物”。普羅提諾將他的「一」定義為「善」的概念和「美」的原則。 （一.6.9）

他的「一」概念涵蓋了思想者和對象。即使是自我思考的智慧（nousis）也必須包含二元性。 “一旦你說出了‘善’，就不要再添加更多的想法：通過任何添加，以及與添加的比例，你都會引入缺陷。” （III.8.11）普羅提諾否認「一」（τὸἝν，to hen；V.6.6）有感知、自我意識或任何其他行動（ergon ）。相反，如果我們堅持進一步描述它，我們必須稱之為純粹的潛力（動力），沒有它，任何事物都無法存在。 （III.8.10）正如普羅提諾在兩處和其他地方所解釋的（例如V.6.3），「一」不可能是存在或有自我意識的造物主上帝。在（V.6.4）中，普羅提諾將“一”比作“光”，將神聖智慧/努斯（Nοῦς，Nous；向善的第一意志）比作“太陽”，最後將靈魂（Ψυχή ，普賽克）比作“月亮” ”，其光僅僅是“來自‘太陽’的光的衍生聚集體”。第一個光可以在沒有任何天體的情況下存在。

超越一切屬性（包括存在與非存在）的「一」是世界的源頭－但不是透過任何創造行為，因為活動不能歸因於不變的、一成不變的「一」。相反，普羅提諾認為，沒有簡單性，多重性就不可能存在。 「不太完美」必然是從「完美」或「較完美」或產生的。因此，所有的「創造」都源自於越來越不完美的後續階段。這些階段並不是暫時孤立的，而是作為一個持續的過程貫穿整個時間。

「一」不只是一個智力概念，而且是一種可以體驗的東西，一種超越所有多樣性的體驗。普羅提諾寫道：「我們甚至不應該說他將看到，但他將成為他所看到的，如果確實可以區分看見者和被看見者，而不是大膽地斷言兩者是一。 」

在新教改革後的幾個世紀裡，新柏拉圖主義被譴責為柏拉圖主義的頹廢和「東方」扭曲。ER Dodds在 1929 年的一篇文章中表明，新柏拉圖主義的關鍵概念可以追溯到柏拉圖對話錄中的起源，透過他的直接追隨者（例如斯珀西普斯）和新畢達哥拉斯派，一直到普羅提諾和新柏拉圖主義者。因此，他認為，普羅提諾的哲學「不是新柏拉圖主義的起點，而是其思想的頂峰」。進一步的研究強化了這一觀點，到 1954 年，梅蘭可以說“目前的趨勢是彌合而不是擴大柏拉圖主義與新柏拉圖主義之間的差距。”

自1950年代以來，圖賓根學派的柏拉圖解釋認為，亞里斯多德和老學派爭論的所謂柏拉圖的「不成文學說」與普羅提諾的形而上學非常相似。在這種情況下，至少在這個中心領域，對柏拉圖的新柏拉圖式解讀在歷史上是合理的。這意味著，在不承認柏拉圖不成文學的情況下，新柏拉圖主義並不像看起來那樣是一種創新。圖賓根學派的擁護者強調了他們解釋的這一優勢。他們認為普羅提諾推進了柏拉圖本人開創的思想傳統。因此，普羅提諾的形上學，至少在大體上，已經為柏拉圖的第一代學生所熟悉。這證實了普羅提諾自己的觀點，因為他認為自己不是體系的發明者，而是柏拉圖學說的忠實解釋者。

希臘哲學研究領域內至少舉行了兩次現代會議，以解決普羅提諾在他的小冊子《反對諾斯替教》中所說的內容以及他向誰發表的內容，以便分離和澄清涉及希臘哲學起源的事件和人物。從對話中可以看出，這個詞似乎起源於柏拉圖和希臘化傳統，早在自稱「諾斯底主義」的群體——或者現代術語「諾斯替主義」所涵蓋的群體——出現之前。從柏拉圖式到諾斯底用法的轉變似乎讓許多人感到困惑。宗派主義者從哲學背景中獲取希臘術語並將其重新應用到宗教背景中的策略在基督教、伊希斯崇拜和其他古代宗教背景（包括赫爾墨斯宗教背景）中很流行（參見阿博努蒂庫斯的亞歷山大）。

根據阿姆斯壯的說法，普羅提諾和新柏拉圖主義者將諾斯底主義視為地中海和中東畢達哥拉斯和柏拉圖哲學的一種異端或宗派主義形式。同樣根據阿姆斯 壯的說法，普羅提諾指責他們使用毫無意義的行話，並且在歪曲柏拉圖本體論時過於戲劇性和無禮。傳統的、非理性的和不道德的和傲慢阿姆斯特朗認為，普羅提諾也攻擊他們是精英主義者，是對柏拉圖的褻瀆，因為諾斯替派鄙視物質世界及其創造者。

新柏拉圖運動（儘管普羅提諾會簡單地稱自己為柏拉圖的哲學家）似乎是由普羅提諾復興異教哲學傳統的願望所推動的。普羅提諾並不是聲稱對九章集進行了創新，而是澄清了他認為被歪曲或誤解的柏拉圖著作的某些方面。普羅提諾不自稱是創新者，而是傳統的傳播者。普羅提諾將傳統稱為解釋柏拉圖意圖的一種方式。由於柏拉圖的學說是針對學院成員而非一般大眾的，因此外人很容易誤解柏拉圖的意思。然而，普羅提諾試圖澄清學院派哲學家為何沒有得出與他的批評目標 相同的結論（例如將造物主上帝作為對邪惡問題的答案的厭神論或反神論）。

快樂和痛苦、恐懼和勇氣、慾望和厭惡，這些情緒和體驗在哪裡？

一切都充滿了徵兆；智者是指在任何一件事上都能讀懂另一件事的人。

重新審視自己。