Ma Yi-fu, a great 20th-century master of Confucian studies, established the “Theory of the Six Arts” (“Liu Yi Lun”), a paradigm of Modern Confucianism. Yet Liu Yi Lun, up till now, has not been fully studied. This dissertation focuses mainly on the detailed content of Liu Yi Lun. With interpretation in the dissertation, Liu Yi Lun is viewed as a matrix of the emergence of meaning....[ Read more ]

Ma Yi-fu, a great 20th-century master of Confucian studies, established the “Theory of the Six Arts” (“Liu Yi Lun”), a paradigm of Modern Confucianism. Yet Liu Yi Lun, up till now, has not been fully studied. This dissertation focuses mainly on the detailed content of Liu Yi Lun. With interpretation in the dissertation, Liu Yi Lun is viewed as a matrix of the emergence of meaning.

In Chapter One, the outline of Liu Yi Lun is explained, then I conclude that the Six Arts, in Ma Yi-fu’s Liu Yi Lun, are constituted by four constituent characteristics: the Six Arts as ontological substances as a whole (quan-ti), the Six Arts as great functions (da-yong), the Six Arts as self-cultivations (gong-fu), and the Six Arts as teaching taxonomies (pan-jiao). The previous three characteristics, quan-ti, da-yong and gong-fu, being inclusive and interactive with each other, constitute the general structure of Six Arts as a matrix of meaning.

Chapter Two, “The Original Foundation of the Lun Yi Lun”, reveals that the “three-changes” (“san-yi”), constituted naturally by the unchanged (bu-yi), the changes (bian-yi), and the simple changes (jian-yi), make possible the interdependent-formation of the previous three characteristics of the Six Arts.

Chapter Three, “On Ma Yi-fu’s View of the Relations of Confucianism and Buddhism” and Chapter Four, “On Ma Yi-fu’s View of Western Philosophy”, are extended topics of the fourth characteristic of the Six Arts, i.e. “the Six Arts as teaching taxonomies”. From these two chapters, we can further comprehend the meaning of Liu Yi Lun and Ma Yi-fu’s philosophical concerns.