Sun Tzu
The Art of War
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Art of War
The beginning of The Art of War, in a "classical" bamboo book from the reign of the Qianlong Emperor.
Author
Sun Tzu
Genre(s)
military treatise
Publication date
unknown, ca. 6th century BC
ISBN
NA
This article contains Chinese text. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Chinese characters.
The Art of War
Traditional Chinese
????
Simplified Chinese
????
Hanyu Pinyin
Sunzi Bingfa
Literal meaning
Sun Tzu's Military Principles
[show]Transliterations
Mandarin
- Hanyu Pinyin
Sunzi Bingfa
- Wade–Giles
sun1 zi3 ping1 fa3
Wu
- Romanization
sen tsy pin fah
Cantonese
- Jyutping
syun1 zi2 bing1 faat3
The Art of War (simplified Chinese: ????; traditional Chinese: ????; pinyin: Sun?zi? Bing? Fa) is a Chinese military treatise that is attributed to Sun Tzu (also referred to as "Sunzi" and "Sun Wu"), a military strategist of the State of Wu who was active in the late-sixth century BC, during the late Spring and Autumn period. (Some scholars believe that the Art of War was not completed until the subsequent Warring States period.[1]) Composed of 13 chapters, each of which is devoted to one aspect of warfare, it is said to be the definitive work on military strategies and tactics of its time, and is still read for its military insights.
The Art of War is one of the oldest and most successful books on military strategy in the world. It has been the most famous and influential of China's Seven Military Classics: "for the last two thousand years it remained the most important military treatise in Asia, where even the common people knew it by neme."[2] It has had an influence on Eastern military thinking, business tactics, and beyond.
Sun Tzu emphasized the importance of positioning in military strategy, and that the decision to position and army must be based on both objective conditions in the physical environment and the subjective beliefs of other, competitive actors in that environment. He thought that strategy was not planning in the sense of working through an established list, but rather that it requires quick and appropriate responses to changing conditions. Planning works in a controlled environment, but in a changing environment, competing plans collide, creating unexpected situations.
The book was first translated into the French language in 1772 by French Jesuit Jean Joseph Marie Amiot, and into English by British officer Everard Ferguson Calthrop in 1905. Leaders as diverse as Mao Zedong, General Vo Nguyen Giap, Baron Antoine-Henri Jomini, General Douglas MacArthur, Napoleon, and certain members of the Nazi High Command have claimed to have drawn inspiration from the work. The Art of War has also been applied to business and managerial strategies.[3][4][5]