The Art of War - The oldest military treatise In the World E-Book

Sun Tzu

• Herausgeber: Sun Tzu
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

THE ART OF WAR (Chinese: 孫子兵法; pinyin: Sūnzĭ bīngfǎ) is an ancient Chinese military treatise attributed to Sun Tzu, a high-ranking military general, strategist and tactician, and kindred to the Realpolitik of his time, termed in China as Legalism. The text is composed of 13 chapters, each of which is devoted to one aspect of warfare. It is commonly thought of as a definitive work on military strategy and tactics. It has been the most famous and influential of China's Seven Military Classics, and "for the last two thousand years it remained the most important military treatise in Asia, where even the common people knew it by name." It has had an influence on Eastern and Western military thinking, business tactics, legal strategy and beyond.

Beyond its military and intelligence applications from earliest days to the present time, THE ART OF WAR has been applied to many fields well outside of the military. Much of the text is about how to fight wars without actually having to do battle: it gives tips on how to outsmart one's opponent so that physical battle is not necessary. As such, it has found application as a training guide for many competitive endeavors that do not involve actual combat. There are business books applying its lessons to office politics and corporate strategy. Many companies make the book required reading for their key executives. The book is also popular among Western business management, who have turned to it for inspiration and advice on how to succeed in competitive business situations. It has also been applied to the field of education. The Art of War has been the subject of law books and legal articles on the trial process, including negotiation tactics and trial strategy.

Leseprobe

Sun Tzu

The Art of War

The oldest military treatise In the World

First digital edition 2017 by Anna Ruggieri

CONTENTS

PREFACE

INTRODUCTION - Sun Wu and his book

The Text of Sun Tzu

The Commentators

Appreciations of Sun Tzu

Apologies for War

Bibliography

I. LAYING PLANS

II. WAGING WAR

III. ATTACK BY STRATAGEM

IV. TACTICAL DISPOSITIONS

V. ENERGY

VI. WEAK POINTS AND STRONG

VII. MANEUVERING

VIII. VARIATION IN TACTICS

IX. THE ARMY ON THE MARCH

X. TERRAIN

XI. THE NINE SITUATIONS

XII. THE ATTACK BY FIRE

XIII. THE USE OF SPIES

PREFACE

When Lionel Giles beganhis translation of Sun Tzu's ART OF WAR,the work was virtually unknown in Europe. Its introduction toEurope began in 1782 when a French Jesuit Father living in China,Joseph Amiot, acquired a copy of it, and translated it into French.It was not a good translation because, according to Dr. Giles,"[I]t contains a great deal that Sun Tzu did not write, and verylittle indeed of what he did."

The first translation into English was published in 1905 inTokyo by Capt. E. F. Calthrop, R.F.A. However, this translation is,in the words of Dr. Giles, "excessively bad." He goes further inthis criticism: "It is not merely a question of downright blunders,from which none can hope to be wholly exempt. Omissions werefrequent; hard passages were willfully distorted or slurred over.Such offenses are less pardonable. They would not be tolerated inany edition of a Latin or Greek classic, and a similar standard ofhonesty ought to be insisted upon in translations from Chinese." In1908 a new edition of Capt. Calthrop'stranslation was published inLondon. It was an improvement on the first -- omissions filled upand numerous mistakes corrected -- but new errors were created inthe process. Dr. Giles, in justifying his translation, wrote: "Itwas not undertaken out of anyinflated estimate of my own powers;but I could not help feeling that Sun Tzu deserved a better fatethan had befallen him, and I knew that, at any rate, I could hardlyfail to improve on the work of my predecessors."

Clearly, Dr. Giles' work establishedmuch of the groundwork forthe work of later translators who published their own editions. Ofthe later editions of the ART OF WAR I have examined; two featureGiles' edited translation and notes, the other two present the samebasic information from the ancient Chinese commentators found inthe Giles edition. Of these four, Giles' 1910 edition is the mostscholarly and presents the reader an incredible amount ofinformation concerning Sun Tzu's text, much more than any othertranslation.

The Giles' editionof the ART OF WAR, as stated above, was ascholarly work. Dr. Giles was a leading sinologue at the time andan assistant in the Department of Oriental Printed Books andManuscripts in the British Museum. Apparently he wanted to producea definitive edition, superior to anything else that existed andperhaps something that would become a standard translation. It wasthe best translation available for 50 years. But apparently therewas not much interest in Sun Tzu in English- speaking countriessince it tookthe start of the Second World War to renew interest inhis work. Several people published unsatisfactory Englishtranslations of Sun Tzu. In 1944, Dr. Giles' translation was editedand published in the United States in a series of military sciencebooks.But it wasn't until 1963 that a good English translation (bySamuel B. Griffith and still in print) was publishedthat was anequal to Giles' translation. While this translation is more lucidthan Dr. Giles' translation, it lacks his copious notes that makehis so interesting.

Dr. Giles produced a work primarily intended for scholars of theChinese civilization and language. It contains the Chinese text ofSun Tzu, the English translation, and voluminous notes along withnumerous footnotes. Unfortunately, some of his notes and footnotescontain Chinese characters; some are completely Chinese. Thus, aconversion to a Latin alphabet etext was difficult. I did theconversion in complete ignorance of Chinese (except for what Ilearned while doing the conversion). Thus, I faced the difficulttask of paraphrasing it while retaining as much of the importanttext as I could. Every paraphrase represents a loss; thus I didwhat I could to retain as much of the text as possible. Because the1910 text contains a Chineseconcordance, I was able totransliterate proper names, books, and the like at the risk ofmaking the text more obscure. However, the text, on the whole, isquite satisfactory for the casual reader, a transformation madepossible by conversion to an etext.However, I come away from thistask with the feeling of loss because I know that someone with abackground in Chinese can do a better job than I did; any suchattempt would be welcomed.