by Sunzi
Table of Contents
From the pages of The Art of War
Title Page
Copyright Page
SUN TZU
THE WORLD OF SUN TZU AND THE ART OF WAR
Introduction
Dedication
PREFACE
THE ART OF WAR
Sun Tzu on The Art of War
I. LAYING PLANS
II. WAGING WAR
III. ATTACK BY STRATAGEM
IV. TACTICAL DISPOSITIONS
V. ENERGY
VI. WEAK POINTS AND STRONG
VII. MANOEUVRING
VIII. VARIATION OF TACTICS
IX. THE ARMY ON THE MARCH
X. TERRAIN
XI. THE NINE SITUATIONS
XII. THE ATTACK BY FIRE
XIII. THE USE OF SPIES
THE ART OF WAR
Sun Tzu on The Art of War
I. LAYING PLANS
II. WAGING WAR
III. ATTACK BY STRATAGEM
IV. TACTICAL DISPOSITIONS
V. ENERGY
VI. WEAK POINTS AND STRONG
VII. MANOEUVRING
VIII. VARIATION OF TACTICS
IX. THE ARMY ON THE MARCH
X. TERRAIN
XI. THE NINE SITUATIONS
XII. THE ATTACK BY FIRE
XIII. THE USE OF SPIES
APPENDIX: THE COMMENTATORS
FOR FURTHER READING
From the pages of The Art of War
“The art of war is of vital importance to the State. It is a matter of life and death, a road either to safety or to ruin. Hence it is a subject of inquiry which can on no account be neglected.”
(chapter I, paragraphs 1-2)
“All warfare is based on deception.”
(chapter I, paragraph 18)
“There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare.”
(chapter II, paragraph 6)
“Hence to fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting.”
(chapter III, paragraph 2)
“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”
(chapter III, paragraph 18)
“We cannot enter into alliances until we are acquainted with the designs of our neighbours.”
(chapter VII, paragraph 12)
“Rapidity is the essence of war.”
(chapter XI, paragraph 19)
“If the enemy leaves a door open, you must rush in.”
(chapter XI, paragraph 65)
“Be subtle! Be subtle! and use your spies for every kind of business.”
(chapter XIII, paragraph 18)
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Lionel Giles’s translation of Sun Tzu’s The Art of War was first published in 1910.
Published in 2003 by Barnes & Noble Classics with new Introduction, Notes, Biography, Chronology, Comments & Questions, and For Further Reading.
Introduction and For Further Reading
Copyright © 2003 by Dallas Galvin.
Note on Sun Tzu, The World of Sun Tzu and The Art of War, Inspired by The Art of War, and Index
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The Art of War
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SUN TZU
STRATEGY, ESPIONAGE, DECEPTION, military tactics—these are the themes elucidated in the ancient Chinese text The Art of War, the indispensable handbook to a subject that has occupied kings and generals for millennia. Little is known about the historical figure of the book’s author, Sun Tzu. The earliest accounts of his life were written hundreds of years after he died, and the surviving information is clouded by legend.
Thought to have lived in the fifth century B.C., at roughly the same time as Confucius, Sun Tzu was born as Sun Wu—Sun was his family name, Wu his given name, and Tzu an honorific title. His family was part of a clan of experts on arms and fighting; in that era, clans and families “owned” information, just as in the medieval European guilds fathers passed on specialized knowledge and training to their sons. Sun Tzu’s teachings are most likely a combination of his clan’s ideas and his own, as well as concepts associated with early Taoism.
Throughout ancient times, the political and social climate of China was characterized by violent upheaval, the rise and fall of great dynasties, and almost continuous military conflict. Sun Tzu followed the profession of his clan and, on the basis of his growing reputation, entered the service of Ho Lu, king of the state of Wu, as a traveling adviser for hire. His military stratagems intrigued the king, and Sun Tzu eventually became general of the king’s army. Employing psychology, deceit, strategic power, and diplomacy as the fundamental arts of combat, Sun Tzu defeated numerous opponents and created a systematic treatise on war.
Military history offers dramatic testimony of Sun Tzu’s wisdom—the adoption of his methods by the leaders of history’s great armies, and the failure of those who disregarded them.
THE WORLD OF SUN TZU AND THE ART OF WAR
c.1700-c.1027 B.C. The Shang Dynasty is the first documented Chinese civilization. Cities are built, and writing and techniques of bronze metallurgy are developed.
c.1027 The Chou Dynasty begins. The golden age of Chinese philosophy, including the works of Confucius and Lao Tze, it will last until 221 B.C. The first part of the Chou Dynasty, known as the Western Chou Dynasty, will last until 772 B.C., when the Chinese rulers are forced east by barbarians from the north; the king is killed, but his son establishes a new capital at Loyang.
772 The Eastern Chou Dynasty begins; its first part, the Spring and Autumn period, is a time of continuous wars for survival among many small city-states. The Chou emperor steadily loses power as the feudal lords realize he can be beaten, as proved by the defeat in the west. By the end of the Spring and Autumn period (around 481 B.C.) only about a dozen consolidated central states will remain.
685-643 An early state hegemony is established under Duke Huan of Qi. He introduces new state institutions such as taxation, a state-funded army, and state ownership of natural resources; he also establishes an alliance of central states to oppose the power of the large southern kingdom of Chu.
632 A new hegemony of Jin is established under Duke Wen.
c.551 Confucius is born in the northern state of Lu. Over the course of his life, he rises from a warehouse manager to become one of history’s best-known teachers.
546 The state of Sun, which is bordered by the warring states of Chu and Jin, invite
s a delegation of eleven states to sign a nonaggression pact. The peace lasts forty years and gives the larger states a reprieve from several hundred years of constant war.
544 Sun Wu is born in the state of Chi. Later he will be given the honorific title Sun Tzu, meaning Master Sun.
514 The rule of King Ho Lu of the state of Wu begins.
510 Sun Tzu enters the service of Ho Lu.
506 The forty-year peace brokered by the state of Sun in 546 B.C. is broken by the state of Wu, which was not part of the peace agreement.
500 To defend against marauding barbarians from the north, the northern Chinese states begin building walls that are later connected to form the Great Wall of China.
496 King Ho Lu dies of wounds sustained in battle. Although Sun Tzu’s death is never confirmed, it is assumed he did not outlive the king.
482 Wu gains power and becomes the dominant state in ancient China.
479 Confucius dies, leaving many followers who spread his teachings about the proper management of society, based on sympathy or “human-heartedness.”
472 The state of Wu is defeated by the upstart state of Yue.
c.403 The Eastern Chou Dynasty’s Warring States period begins; it is characterized by a power struggle between the large states of China, each trying to gain control over the entire area. The Warring States period will last until the end of the Chou Dynasty, about 221 B.C.
c.380 Sun Pin, a descendant of Sun Tzu, is born. Sun Pin is the supposed author of The Lost Art of War, which is considered a companion piece to The Art of War. Sun Pin will achieve great fame as a general, and his writings will build on ideas and tactics found in Sun Tzu’s seminal work.
221 B.C. China is unified under the harsh rule of Ch’in Shih Huang-ti. The Chou Dynasty ends and the Ch’in Dynasty begins. Bureaucratic government is established, and a written language is standardized. Roads and canals are built, as is much of the Great Wall.
91 The Shih Chi (Historical Records), the first known history of China, is completed. It includes one of two ancient biographies of Sun Tzu.
1st century A.D. The Wu Yueh Ch’un-ch’iu appears. It contains a biography of Sun Tzu that details his fabled arrival into the service of King Ho Lu. The Wu Yueh Ch’un-ch’iu is entertaining, but it is most likely a romanticized embellishment of the tales found in the Shih Chi.
1772 The Art of War is translated into French by Father J. J. Amiot, a Jesuit who learned of Sun Tzu and The Art of War while he was a missionary in China. The translation is probably read by Napoleon.
1905 In Tokyo, the first English translation of The Art of War, by Captain E. F. Calthrop, appears under the title Sonshi, the Japanese form of Sun Tzu.
1910 Lionel Giles publishes his English translation of The Art of War.
1972 An archaeological dig unearths a lost text of The Art of War in the Shantung province of modern China. The text contains long sections of thirteen chapters that are already known as well as passages from five lost chapters. The texts appear to have been buried around 140 B.C.
INTRODUCTION
It is mere illusion and pretty sentiment to expect much from mankind if it forgets how to make war. As yet no means are known which call so much into action as a great war, that rough energy born of the camp, that deep impersonality born of hatred, that conscience born of murder and cold-bloodedness, that fervor born of effort in the annihilation of the enemy, that proud indifference to loss, to one’s own existence, to that of one’s fellows, to that earthquake-like soul-shaking which a people needs when it is losing its vitality.
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human (1878)
War … is in its essence, and it is a main condition of its success, to kindle into fierce exercise among great masses of men the destructive and combative passions—passions as fierce and malevolent as that with which the hound hunts the fox to its death… . Destruction is one of its chief ends. Deception is one of its chief means, and one of the great arts of skillful generalship is to deceive in order to destroy… . It would be difficult to conceive a disposition more remote from the morals of ordinary life, not to speak of Christian ideals… . Hardly any one will be so confident of the virtue of his rulers as to believe that every war … is just and necessary.
W. E. H. Lecky, The Map of Life (1899)
WAR IS A HOWLING, BAYING JACKAL. Or is it the animating storm? Suicidal madness or the purifying fire? An imperialist travesty? Or the glorious explosion of a virile nation made manifest upon the planet? In all recorded history, this debate is recent, as is the idea of peace to describe an active state happier than a mere interregnum between fisticuffs. Astounding as it may seem, war has consistently won the debate. In fact, it never had serious competition—not until August 24, 1898, anyway, when Czar Nicholas II of Russia called for an international conference specifically to discuss “the most effectual means” to “a real and durable peace.” That was the first time nations would gather without a war at their backs to discuss how war might be prevented systematically. Nicholas was successful. His first Peace Conference was held in 1899. It was followed by a second, in 1907. These meetings gave rise to a process in which the world gained a common code of international laws.
It was a moment when peace and the trials of war were under the microscope of the civilized world. Off in a very quiet corner of this stage, there also appeared two scholars: one, a ghost, Sun Wu—this is Sun Tzu’s actual name; Sun is the family name, and Tzu an honorific—a member of a Chinese clan of experts on arms and fighting, who had lived some 2,400 years earlier; the other, a librarian and student of the Chinese classics, Lionel Giles, who published his translation of The Art of War in 1910. He, too, was a son of eminence—his father was the great sinologist Herbert Giles—and he transported Sun Tzu’s urgent injunctions on the nature of war across vast reaches of time and culture; the task was extraordinary, the impetus behind it almost saintly. The influence of the work of these two men colors our lives even as this text is written. But it did not come without effort, and even today, with a century of English-language scholarship on Asian literature, religion, and societies behind us, there is still much to puzzle the general reader.
World War I and its carnage would soon burst upon the world, leaving an estimated 25 million dead, twice the tally for all the wars of nineteenth-century Europe. Nicholas and his entire class would disappear amid the terrors of revolution in Russia, China, and Mexico, to name but the grandest uprisings. World War II would follow with no fewer than 60 million dead, and on its heels a whirl of wars for independence, civil wars, and the surrogate wars of Vietnam, Korea, Africa, the Balkans, and the Middle East—all in all, a century-long testament to the failure of humanity’s best intentions. It would be an odd soul who did not find himself feeling as Abraham Lincoln did in his Second Inaugural Address, on March 4, 1865, as the American Civil War was ending: “Fondly do we hope—fervently do we pray—that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away.”
Yet it takes little experience to understand the futility of belligerence alone, as Sun Tzu wrote: “[H]e who is destined to defeat first fights and afterwards looks for victory” (chap. IV, paragraph 15). On the world front or the level of the individual, the issue is not force, not arms—it is strategy. In his study of Mao Tse-tung, modern warfare’s most ardent student of Sun Tzu, Robert Payne notes: “Sun Wu’s ideas on war are exceedingly adaptable, … nearly all of them demonstrating how the commander of a small force can overcome a powerful enemy, given suitable conditions of his own making. These apothegms have a peculiarly Chinese flavor, hardheaded, deeply philosophical, often showing a disturbing knowledge of the human soul under stress” (Robert Payne, Mao Tse-tung; see “For Further Reading”). But how did Sun Tzu know what he knew? Where did he get his information? Can we trust it?
Sometime (most historians suggest about 500 B.C.) during the Spring and Autumn period of the Eastern Chou Dynasty (see section “The World of Sun Tzu and The Art of War”), a strikingly serious fellow, dres
sed in simple monkish gray, the living man named Sun Tzu, contemplated the madness of his times as deeply and clearly as he could. According to modern Chinese scholars, Sun Tzu belonged to an extended family whose members for generations had made their living as military advisers. The revelations Sun Tzu provides us would have been a combination of the journeyman ideas taught (and preserved) by his clan, as well as his own. He would also have been imbued with the ideas we associate with Taoism, which were very much a part of the times.
Foremost among them for a supremely disciplined military adviser like Sun Tzu would have been two commands, both of which required methodical and deliberate decisions. First is the mandate for the strong and the knowledgeable to help the weak. Evening out the playing field carried the charge of religious duty for these advisers. Along with that comes the question of virtue, “the mandate of Heaven.” That meant Sun Tzu would have assessed the intrinsic virtue of the weaker and the stronger powers, adhering to the rule of t’ien ming, “the mandate of Heaven,” as described in the Classical Chinese text The Book of Documents. As Burton Watson explains, would-be conquerors, “by their just and virtuous actions, receive from Heaven—a vague, half-personalized spiritual power which rules the universe—a command to set up a new rule. So long as the successive leaders of the new dynasty continue to follow the virtuous course which first entitled their predecessors to the mandate, Heaven will continue to sanction their power.” But if they do not maintain virtue, all bets are off: If they sink into “negligence and evil,” Heaven will bestow its sanction upon another group of leaders. “In other words, it is virtue alone that entitles a ruler to rule, and when he sets aside virtue, he sets aside the right to call himself a sovereign. The throne is conferred … only for as long as the dynasty proves worthy of it” (Watson, Early Chinese Literature). Sun Tzu would have considered these issues quite seriously. Even given the frailty of all human flesh, sayings equivalent to our common phrases “It’s not my problem” and “It’s just business” or even the excuse of the “tyranny of the bottom line” would have been unthinkable.
The resulting document—for Sun Tzu was a man of the aristocracy and could write—is a treatise that has come down through history to be called Sun-tzu ping-fa, Sun Tzu on the Art of War, just Sun Tzu (the customary nomenclature the Chinese use instead of a book title), or, as in many modern editions, The Art of War. For Sun Tzu, war, like most of mankind’s social, biological, and financial activities, followed certain patterns that can be distilled into laws. He codified his observations into the first military treatise in recorded history. Significantly, he was not only the first to teach that the side that controls those laws of engagement wins, but the long-term influence of his and certain other texts meant that Imperial China, once it had taken shape, rarely needed to wage war outside its boundaries. At the time Lionel Giles made his translation, in fact, China was considered something of a teddy bear among the bellicose hotheads of empire. So Giles in this translation is braiding the two warring streams of thought about war—that it is senseless butchery and that it serves as a sacred restorative to the body politic—into a work that cautions against war, then argues for how it may best be carried out. This is an extraordinary document at an extraordinary turning point in world history.