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WorkSun Tzu

The Art of War

A manual that counts the cost of a war before the first battle, and ranks highest the general who wins without fighting at all.

by Sun Tzu30 passages held

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Original title
孫子兵法
First published
500 BCE(aged 44)
Original language
Chinese

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Overview

A war is best won before it starts, and best of all without a battle: that is the argument of a short Chinese manual that treats war as a question of whether a state survives, and of what it can afford, rather than of courage. Its chapters count what a campaign consumes in chariots, armour, supplies and gold, and conclude that no country has ever profited from a long war. The general is therefore to settle the outcome in advance. He compares the two sides on a fixed list of factors, deceives the enemy about his own strength and position, pays his spies generously, and fights only when the reckoning already favours him. Knowledge of the enemy, the last chapter says, comes from people, never from spirits or omens. Who wrote it is disputed. The book speaks in the voice of Master Sun (Sun Tzu), and around 100 BCE Sima Qian, the Han court historian, wrote that Master Sun was a general named Sun Wu who presented thirteen chapters to King Helü of Wu. But the Zuo zhuan, the chronicle of that age, never mentions Sun Wu, and many scholars place the text in the Warring States period, from the fifth century BCE, when kingdoms raised mass armies and one lost war could end a state. Bamboo slips found in 1972 in a Han tomb at Yinqueshan, in Shandong, show that a text close to the one read today was circulating by the late second century BCE. The Song court set it among its Seven Military Classics in 1080. The first European translation, by Joseph-Marie Amiot, a French Jesuit living in Beijing, appeared in 1772. The first English version, by E. F. Calthrop, a British artillery captain, was published in Tokyo in 1905 and revised in London in 1908; in 1910 Lionel Giles, a sinologist at the British Museum, published his own translation and, in its preface, called the Tokyo version full of blunders.

Key concepts

What are the five matters in the preliminary reckoning?

They are the Way, Heaven, Earth, the Leader and Law, the fixed list on which a general compares his side with the enemy's before any fighting. The Way is the ruler's uprightness that unites the people behind him; Heaven is weather and season; Earth is distance and position; the Leader is intelligence, truth, benevolence, courage and strictness; Law is the ordering of the troops. The side that excels in more of them can be named the victor in advance.

What are normal and abnormal forces in The Art of War?

The normal force engages the enemy in the expected way; the abnormal force, held back or sent where he is not looking, defeats him. The fifth chapter insists there are only these two, yet like five notes or five colours they combine without limit, each turning into the other like a wheel with no beginning. Victory comes from their interchange, which is why no plan of this kind can be read in advance.

What does emptiness and strength mean in the sixth chapter?

It names where to strike: never at the enemy's strength, always at his emptiness, the points he has not defended or cannot hold. The general creates emptiness with feints that force the enemy to guard everywhere, since whoever prepares everywhere is weak everywhere, while his own army stays one body. Like water leaving the heights for the hollows, the attack takes the shape the enemy gives it.

What are the nine grounds?

They are nine situations an army can occupy, classed by its relation to home and to the enemy: distracting, disturbing, contentious, intersecting, path-ridden, deeply involved, difficult, enclosed and death ground. Each carries its rule — do not fight on your own soil, do not linger on difficult ground, use stratagem when enclosed, fight when there is no way out. The deeper an army stands in hostile country, the book claims, the more united it becomes.

Which five kinds of spies does the book distinguish?

Village spies are local people who give information; inner spies are enemy officials in our employ; converted spies are the enemy's own agents bought over; death spies carry deliberate falsehoods to the enemy; living spies come back to report. Run together, the five form what Calthrop renders the Mysterious Thread, and the converted spy is paid most generously, because it is through him that all the others can be used.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

Winning before the battle is fought

Can a war be decided at a table before any army moves, and what follows if the best victory needs no battle at all? The answer turns war from a contest of courage into a question of what a state can afford.

Sun Tzu opens by calling war the matter on which a state's existence depends, and then treats it as arithmetic. Before moving, the general compares both sides on the Way, Heaven, Earth, the Leader and Law. A long campaign, the second chapter counts, empties the treasury and invites the neighbours in, and no country has ever profited from prolonged war. Hence the ranking in the third chapter: to fight and win a hundred times is not the highest skill, to subdue the enemy without fighting is. The reasoning is economic before it is humane.

  • military strategy
  • strategic assessment
  • costs of war
  • logistics
  • victory
  • risk management

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War as pretence, and the spies who see through it

If all warfare rests on seeming, weak when strong and far when near, how does a general learn anything true about his enemy? The book answers with deception turned outward and paid informants turned inward.

The first chapter makes pretence the ordinary condition of war: feign inability when able, hold out a small gain as bait, anger the enemy, divide him. The last chapter turns the same logic inward. Knowledge of the enemy comes not from gods, omens or calculation but from men, and five kinds of spy are to be run at once, the converted spy paid best of all. To grudge a spy his salary, Sun Tzu writes, is to lack humanity, since a hundred thousand men in the field cost far more than the ignorance saves.

  • deception
  • secrecy
  • espionage
  • military intelligence
  • intelligence

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An army shaped like water

What does it take to fight without a fixed plan, letting the ground and the enemy decide the form of every move? The book's answer is that rigidity loses, not weakness.

Water leaves the heights and runs to the hollows; an army, the sixth chapter says, turns from strength and strikes emptiness, and a stratagem that has won once is not repeated. The whole middle of the book trains that responsiveness: six kinds of ground, nine grounds with a rule for each, the normal force that engages and the abnormal one that decides, combined without end like five notes. Even death ground becomes a tool, since men with no way out fight hardest. In war there is no fixity, and the general who acts on that is called a god of war.

  • adaptability
  • terrain strategy
  • terrain
  • tactics
  • maneuver
  • weather
  • force
  • defense

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Within this work

passages held
30
distinct concepts
64
by passages held, corpus-wide
#730

What this book thinks together

The wheel takes this book’s leading concepts and shows how often they come up together. The wider the band between two, the more of its passages speak of both. Among them, most often together: “deception” and “military strategy”.
Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 5 concepts, joined by 8 pairings. 24 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
ConceptPaired conceptShared passages
deceptionmilitary strategy8
leadershipmilitary strategy6
deceptionleadership4
leadershipmorale3
military leadershipmorale2
deceptionmorale1
military leadershipmilitary strategy1
military strategymorale1

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

  1. -500 The Art of War (孫子兵法) you are here EN
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