Sun Tsu Art of War
Sun Tzu as Confucian Scholar-Soldier
Sun Tzu and his famous book The Art of War cannot be understood apart from the Chinese cultural and historical context that produced them, although his concepts were widely borrowed and imitated over the past 2,000 years. He was a contemporary of Confucius, after all, and his assumptions about warfare were harmonized within that philosophical tradition. Warfare was an evil, a waste and cause of disharmony and disorder, especially when it was prolonged. It was a waste of lives as well as the resources of the state, and should therefore be avoided through deterrence and clever diplomacy, and only then be used as a last resort. The most brilliant commander was the one who was able to defeat the enemy without fighting battles, although if these had to be fought then they should be won quickly and decisively.
In the Western world, The Art of War by Sun Wu (Sun Tzu) is often regarded as a how-to manual for winning battles, which indeed it is, but this is also to ignore the larger cultural and historical context in which this work was composed, edited and formalized into its present version. Sun Wu was also a Confucian philosopher in his own right, and the politics, culture and economics of warfare was his major area of study, and the 'Tzu' was actually an honorific title that meant Master or Philosopher. In his own way, he should be considered a cultural anthropologist or sociologist who firmly insisted that knowledge of one's own society as well as those of allies as enemies was one of the key elements to success in warfare. As a Confucian, he actually regarded warfare as an evil that should be prevented if possible and then won very quickly if it could not be avoided. His philosophy was widely studied in Asia long before it was known in the West, and his ideal of the Confucian philosopher-soldier was widely imitated in other countries, including by Korea's greatest national her Admiral Yi Sunshin.
Sun Tzu (Master Sun) or Sun Wu was from the same generation as Confucius (551-479 BC) and was employed by King Ho-lu of Wu during the Warring States period of Chinese history. Warfare had become far more extensive and brutal in this era as nine kingdoms contended for control of China, and battlefield deaths rose from the hundreds to the hundreds of thousands. In the Spring and Autumn era before the time of the Warring States, warfare had been an aristocratic profession, rarely involving civilians or large numbers of troops, and even Confucius was trained as both a scholar and a soldier. Later, in the Warring States era, the use of conscripts and mercenaries became more common, as did the use of professional military strategists like Sun Tzu, who offered their services to the various kingdoms. New archeological evidence in 1972, uncovered five lost chapters from his book The Art of War in addition to the thirteen familiar ones, dating from the 2nd Century BC (Carr, 2000, p. 18). This previous edition was one thousand years older than any manuscript discovered up to that time. In addition, the discovery also included the book of a later Master Sun or Sun Pin, whose concepts of war differed somewhat from the original Sun Wu. In ancient China, all such texts were compilations that "emerged more as a process than as a single event," but The Art of War was already edited into its final form by the 100s BC (Carr, p. 20).
Chinese philosophy took a highly pragmatic and materialistic view toward warfare, as indeed it did to other aspects of politics, government and society. War is a "cultural performance" in the anthropological sense that is "routinely accompanies by equally unique forms of cultural discourse" concerning why societies wage wars, what means they use and what their goals are, and Sun Tzu always had "delicately nuanced and understated views on precisely these questions in The Art of War" (Lucas, 2009, p. 38). He could even be considered an anthropologist in his own right, as well as a historian and sociologist, since he placed great value on intelligence and asserted that "it is as important to know yourself -- and by extension your allies -- as to know your enemies" (Banton 2004). Warfare was a regular "topic of philosophic reflection in China that is not paralleled in Western philosophical literature," although within the Confucian context it was always regarded as evil and a last resort (Carr, p. 31).
In warfare and in every other aspect of life, Chinese culture and philosophy put the highest...
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