Sun Tzu as Confucian Scholar-Soldier and Military Philosopher

Introduction: Sun Tzu Beyond the Battlefield

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, and his assumptions about warfare were harmonized within that philosophical tradition. Warfare was an evil — a waste and a cause of disharmony and disorder, especially when prolonged. It was a waste of lives as well as state resources, and should therefore be avoided through deterrence and clever diplomacy, and used only as a last resort. The most brilliant commander was the one who could defeat the enemy without fighting battles, although if battles had to be fought, 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 reading ignores the larger cultural and historical context in which the 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 constituted his major area of study. The title "Tzu" was actually an honorific meaning 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 and enemies — was one of the key elements of success in warfare. As a Confucian, he regarded warfare as an evil that should be prevented if possible and 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 hero, Admiral Yi Sunshin.

Historical and Cultural Context of the Warring States Period

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 that preceded 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 archaeological evidence uncovered in 1972 revealed five lost chapters from The Art of War in addition to the thirteen familiar ones, dating from the 2nd century BC (Carr, 2000, p. 18). This earlier edition was one thousand years older than any manuscript discovered up to that time. The discovery also included the book of a later Master Sun — Sun Pin — whose concepts of war differed somewhat from those of 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).

Confucian Philosophy and the Nature of Warfare

Chinese philosophy took a highly pragmatic and materialistic view toward warfare, as it did toward other aspects of politics, government, and society. War is a "cultural performance" in the anthropological sense that is "routinely accompanied by equally unique forms of cultural discourse" concerning why societies wage wars, what means they use, and what their goals are. 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, 2009). 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).

Conclusion: Warfare, Harmony, and the Limits of Strategy

Considered from a cultural and anthropological viewpoint, Sun Tzu was a Confucian scholar who sought out principles of harmony and order in warfare, government, and statecraft. War should not be fought for purposes of plunder, aggression, or personal glory, but only as a necessary evil to preserve the state — and only then in such a way that it does not ruin the state it is supposedly protecting. All the greatest rulers and generals in history sought ways to achieve their goals without fighting battles, and the best generals knew how to win without fighting at all. A military commander should also be a model of duty, diligence, loyalty, and propriety rather than corrupt and self-seeking, for no army would ever find lasting success without a commander who embodied these virtues.

Sun Tzu's cultural and philosophical assumptions held that the general was the father of his men and their model, just as the king was the head of the entire extended family of his subjects. If the leaders lacked virtue, then the state was doomed in any case and would be conquered or overthrown. Sun Tzu's mental world was authoritarian and hierarchical rather than democratic and individualistic, and separating out his pragmatic principles of warfare from the broader cultural, political, and anthropological context is deeply problematic. His work was designed for a specific period in Chinese military history when conflict between the Warring States had intensified and escalated beyond any scale previously seen. Even though Sun Tzu achieved success in this environment, his preference was always for wars that were never fought at all. He knew how to win them when necessary, but on the whole he believed that states would do better to pursue more harmonious relations.

References

Banton, M. (2009). The Social Anthropology of Complex Societies. Routledge.

Carr, C. (2000). The Book of War. Modern Library Paperback.

Ebrey, P. et al. (2009). East Asia: A Cultural, Social, and Political History, 2nd ed. Houghton Mifflin Co.

Lucas, G. R. (2009). Anthropologists in Arms: The Ethics of Military Anthropology. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.