The Art of War
Translations from the Asian Classics
TRANSLATED BY VICTOR H. MAIR
The Art of War
Sun Zis MILITARY METHODS
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS
NEW YORK
Columbia University Press
Publishers Since 1893
New York Chichester, West Sussex
cup.columbia.edu
Copyright 2007 Columbia University Press
All rights reserved
E-ISBN 978-0-231-50853-7
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Sunzi, 6th cent. B.C.
[Sunzi bing fa. English]
The art of war / Sun Zis military methods; translated by Victor H. Mair.
p. cm.(Translations from the Asian Classics)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-231-13382-1 (cloth) : alk. paper)ISBN 978-0-231-50853-7 (e-book)
1. WarEarly works to 1800. 2. Military art and scienceEarly works to 1800. I. Title.
U101.S9513 2007
355.02dc22
2007017771
Frontispiece
A type of bronze basin called a jian, which has a wide mouth, rounded sides, a flat bottom, and four animal-head handles with movable rings. The outer surface of the basin is covered with copper-inlaid battle scenes. This finely made jian dates to the period from the late seventh through the early fifth centuries B.C., and was excavated from Tomb M1 at Shanbiao Zhen, Ji County, Henan Province. The jian here is one of a nearly identical pair, famous for their depiction of battle in the period just before the compilation of the Sun Zi bingfa. They provide important data for the study of the history of ancient weapons and early warfare. We may note in particular that the soldiers in these scenes are armed with bows instead of the crossbows, which had become popular by the time of the Sun Zi bingfa. The illustrations in the text are based on rubbings taken from this jian. It is housed in the Museum of the Institute of History and Philology of Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan, and published here with the permission of the Institute. This impressive basin is also the source of the chapter designs.
Art on the title and dedication pages are by Daniel Heitkamp
A Columbia University Press E-book.
CUP would be pleased to hear about your reading experience with this e-book at .
For Li-ching
A Brave Fighter
CONTENTS
A good warrior is not bellicose,
A good fighter does not anger.
Tao te Ching/Dao de jing, 68
The Way of heaven
does not war
yet is good at conquering.
Tao te Ching/Dao de jing, 73
Now,
Weapons are instruments of evil omen;
Creation abhors them.
Therefore,
One who aspires to the Way
does not abide in them.
The superior man
at home honors the left,
on the battlefield honors the right.
Therefore,
Weapons are not instruments of the superior man;
Weapons are instruments of evil omen,
to be used only when there is no other choice.
He places placidity above all
And refuses to prettify weapons;
If one prettifies weapons,
This is to delight in the killing of others.
Now,
One who delights in the killing of others
Cannot exercise his will over all under heaven.
For this reason,
On occasions for celebration,
the left is given priority;
On occasions for mourning,
the right is given priority.
Therefore,
A deputy general stands on the left,
The general-in-chief stands on the right.
In other words,
They stand in accordance with mourning ritual.
The killing of masses of human beings,
we bewail with sorrow and grief;
Victory in battle,
we commemorate with mourning ritual.
Tao te Ching/Dao de jing, 31
Sun Wu was a wise general of a former age. He is remote and recondite, and it is difficult to know anything about him.
Falsely attributed to Liu Xiang (7978 B.C.), Xin xu (Newly compiled stories) and quoted in Taiping yulan (Imperial survey of the Great Peace [reign period]; completed 984 A.D.), s. 276.
Sun Zi was an extraordinary thinker, still very influential. As a strategist he shares supremacy with just one other writer: Carl von Clausewitz (17801831), author of On War (1832). Like Clausewitz, Sun Zi is unfortunately most familiar at second hand, through a handful of quotations that lack context, for like Clausewitz, he, too, is rarely read in his entirety, with real care. One reason for this is the great difficulty of translating either of these works into lucid English in a way that is true to the texts. Vom Kriege is difficult enough. Not until 1976 did a first-rate translation appear, by Michael Howard and Peter Paret.
The problems faced by the translator of Sun Zitextually, philologically, and in every other respect (save length)are, however, orders of magnitude greater. Many fine scholars have attempted the task, and several excellent versions are already published. This one, however, stands out above the others. I am deeply honored to be invited to offer a foreword to this English version of Sun Zi, by my colleague Victor Mair, which I am confident will become the standard, both because of the deep understanding of the text that it manifests and because of its great clarity and readability.
To begin at the beginning: The title of Sun Zis text,
bingfa
is usually put into English as the art of war, which suggests a closeness of theme to Clausewtizs
Vom Kriege, which unquestionably means on war. But
bing in Chinese usually means soldier, and Sun Zi, as Mair makes clear in his notes and as is evident from the text, is almost entirely concerned with military methods that can lead to victory, rather than with war as a general phenomenon. In his first chapter Sun Zi says a certain amount about the importance of war to the state and the perils of waging it unsuccessfully. But he is not concerned, as Clausewitz is, to isolate the philosophical essence of war, in the manner that German philosophers among his contemporaries did, in their studies of history, aesthetics, morals, or similar topics.
Clausewitz has a good deal to say about the operational and tactical issues involved in winning a war, and comparing Sun Zi to him at these points is very useful. But no explicit counterpart exists in Sun Zi to the carefully articulated philosophical framework about the fundamental nature of war that Clausewitz develops. One can, however, deduce Sun Zis views on some of these issues.
Consider the question of the nature of war itself. Clausewitz had first encountered war in 1793 as a twelve-year-old lance corporal fighting the French, a task to which he was devoted until the final defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo thirty-two years later. The Napoleonic Wars, though punctuated by truces and the forming and re-forming of coalitions, were essentially continuous and protracted over decades. They provided vivid lessons in the way that no single battle, no matter how decisive it might seemeither Austerlitz or Trafalgar, both in 1805, for exampleseemed ever to be genuinely conclusive. They showed how the use of force elicited counterforce, and how the scale of that force might be driven up by this reciprocal action, in what today is called escalation. The central importance of politics and the interaction between politics and the use of force was also clear in the Napoleonic Wars, particularly with respect to truces, the formation and maintenance of coalitions, and, in the final years, the issue of war aims with respect to Napoleoncould he be allowed to stay on as emperor in France, or was unconditional surrender (a term not yet in use) the goal?
