SUN TZU

STRATEGY, ESPIONAGE, DECEPTION, military tactics—these are the themes elucidated in the ancient Chinese text The Art of War, the indispensable handbook to a subject that has occupied kings and generals for millennia. Little is known about the historical figure of the book’s author, Sun Tzu. The earliest accounts of his life were written hundreds of years after he died, and the surviving information is clouded by legend.

Thought to have lived in the fifth century B.C., at roughly the same time as Confucius, Sun Tzu was born as Sun Wu—Sun was his family name, Wu his given name, and Tzu an honorific title. His family was part of a clan of experts on arms and fighting; in that era, clans and families “owned” information, just as in the medieval European guilds fathers passed on specialized knowledge and training to their sons. Sun Tzu’s teachings are most likely a combination of his clan’s ideas and his own, as well as concepts associated with early Taoism.

Throughout ancient times, the political and social climate of China was characterized by violent upheaval, the rise and fall of great dynasties, and almost continuous military conflict. Sun Tzu followed the profession of his clan and, on the basis of his growing reputation, entered the service of Ho Lu, king of the state of Wu, as a traveling adviser for hire. His military stratagems intrigued the king, and Sun Tzu eventually became general of the king’s army. Employing psychology, deceit, strategic power, and diplomacy as the fundamental arts of combat, Sun Tzu defeated numerous opponents and created a systematic treatise on war.

Military history offers dramatic testimony of Sun Tzu’s wisdom—the adoption of his methods by the leaders of history’s great armies, and the failure of those who disregarded them.