A point that was also enlightening to me: Chinese literature has two components. One is the theoretical analysis like Sunzi Bingfa, Hanfeizi etc. The other examples of application in different contexts, given in form of stories. It's impressive how much more you can understand and learn if you combine Sunzi Bingfa with Sanguo Yanyi for instance.
Also the story becomes more deep when you realize that there are story elements where they act like the character would coincidentally slip into a situation but actually was probably stupid on purpose to create a much better outcome for himself. My favorite example being when Caocao fails to kill Dong Zhuo who is laying in front of him sleeping. If you are a mass murderer like either of these two there is almost no chance to fail to assassinate someone laying in front of you sleeping. And yet Caocao did.
What happened due to this failure? The rebels took him in and started to listen to his ideas, when before they ignored him due to his low background. Also one of his biggest competitors, Wang Yun, who coincidentally is the owner of the knife used in the attempted murder.
What would have happened if he had successfully killed Dong Zhuo? Lu Bu probably would have killed him on the spot. Maybe he would go in history as a small hero but he would have never become emperor.
Same goes with SiMa Yi and ZhuGe Liang, at least from the TV show "JunShiLianMeng"(Alliance of Strategists). The famous SanGuo Yanyi story - KongChengJi (Ruse of the Empty City). SiMa Yi did not enter the city even though he know ZhuGe Liang was bluffing, and ZhuGe Liang knew that he knew. Strategically, if SiMa Yi kills ZhuGe Liang, he would won the war against Han, and CaoCao would have no use for a powerful strategist who has won people's heart - SiMa Yi would surely be killed. It's a great modern TV show.
First of all, the popular empty-city story is made up by the author of "Romance of Three Kingdom." It actually was Zhao Yan, a general in the same faction as ZhuGe Liang, who pretended to have an empty fortress and repelled an attack. Needless to say, there is no truth whatsoever to alternative "truth" that drama speculated.
Second, by the time Sima Yi commanded a large field army, Cao Cao had died for a long time. Sima Yi represented powerful large land-owners who would gain monopoly on official positions during Cao Pi's reign, Cao Cao's son. It is a recipe for weakening imperial authority and endangering emperors. Historians argue that Cao Cao passed up the chance to become emperor because he would not countenance such policy.
Third, that TV show is like so much of Chinese TV that is a wasteland. It is melodramatic, ludicrous, and laughably bad acting. I am sorry, but it is unwatchable, not just the show, even the trailer. Compare the stylized combat and bloodletting to the realism of "Game of Throne" (yes, I am ware of the irony of calling historical drama fake and fantasy real); there is no comparison. Nothing there is believable, much like every word out of CCP's mouth. It is sad, really.
It is bad on many levels - inconsistent camera positioning is a rookie mistake and is wearing on the viewer, and much of the exposition is painfully heavy-handed, while much (most?) of the dialog is propagandistic.
On the other hand, GoT does the same sort of thing in reverse; technical polish and a realistic aesthetic are the vehicle for a different set of propositions about how the world works. One genre uses fantastical formalism while another relies on fantastical plots.
It's interesting to contrast these two with more subversive explorations of the same forms, like Shadow and Watchmen (the movie; I haven't seen the TV reimagining yet though people seem to be raving about it).
I knew what you said just FYI. I wouldn't treat the book or show too seriously... it's just entertainment, not history.
The show's main character is SiMa Yi, which is kind of new to me. It's like a retold of "Romance of Three Kingdom" from a SiMa family and Cao family perspective. Though I hated a lot of Chinese TV shows, this one I actually like and would recommend. I can't remember any combat in this show though, probably fairly average. I wouldn't compare it to Game of Thrones, maybe House of Cards is a closer genre.
Sorry if I come across a bit strong. I am a something of a history buff, and the liberty that some Chinese historical shows take is shocking to me. I am like you, curious about different interpretations of familiar events.
I know it's just fyi. I understand the frustration that one of your favorite parts of history is being stumped on by bad TV shows. Any kind of "YanYi" is pretty just entertainment show. Some are not too bad, some are just aweful. In recent years, these bad shows are just getting worse. I think "JunShiLiangMeng" is better than most. Characters looked normal rather than hair-dyed XiaoXianRou with no facial expressions.
Then of course there's the gathering of arrows, but there are too many good stories to talk about. Just look in one of my brocade sacks, each has a useful story! (Chapter 54)
The story I am familiar with emphasizes different aspects but illustrate the same point.
Cao Cao volunteered for assassination mission but asked Wang Yun for a renowned sword/knife as the assassination weapon. As he entered Dong Zhou's chamber he encountered general Lu Bu, a fearsome warrior and Dong Zhou's personal body guard. Cao Cao told Lu Bu that he wanted to try out a famously fast horse of Dong Zhou and asked the general to fetch it. When Cao Cao failed to kill Dong Zhou, he pretended that he was gifting the famous (assassination weapon) sword as a token of respect. Then he went outside and jumped on the famously swift horse general Lu Bu just brought at Cao Cao's request and fled, while Dong Zhou and Lu Bu were puzzled by Cao Cao's action.
I cannot vouch for the story's authenticity, but what a fascinating story.
My understanding about the article, which makes it interesting to me, is that (according to TFA) a lot of what is generally understood about The Art of War as general strategic concerns applied in very large scales or long timeframes was actually way more literal than people think. Always according to TFA, when Sun Tzu recommends "attacking allies" he literally means attacking them on the battlefield, because they are more likely to flee -- not undermining alliances prior to a war, as many people understand it. Likewise, when he means "attacking the enemy's strategy" he didn't mean "undermining the long term grand strategy of the enemy" but actually "acting to neutralize the immediate battlefield plan" (as in "if the enemy tries to lay a siege, provoke him into attacking"). Here strategy means "immediate battlefield plan", not "long term nation-wide strategy".
Overall, always according to TFA, Sun Tzu's Art of Way is way more practical and literal, and less "hand-wavey overall strategy" than generally understood. I think I actually like this because it more or less destroys its appropriation by self-help/business gurus. After all, if Sun Tzu is literally talking about killing your enemies while they are crossing the river, it's less useful as a metaphor for startups -- a welcome side-effect.
> Overall, always according to TFA, Sun Tzu's Art of Way is way more practical and literal, and less "hand-wavey overall strategy" than generally understood. I think I actually like this because it more or less destroys its appropriation by self-help/business gurus. After all, if Sun Tzu is literally talking about killing your enemies while they are crossing the river, it's less useful as a metaphor for startups -- a welcome side-effect.
If you read Sun Tzu, at least you can then claim to have read one of the classics, and know a little bit about ancient warfare. Even if it's not directly applicable to running a startup. Which is certainly more than can be said of the pointless waffle that fills the self-help/business shelves in the bookstore.
Oh, yes, agreed! And of course it's worthwhile to read The Art of War, because it's an interesting book.
But note I was talking about those worthless derivatives "The Art of War for Business", "The Art of War for Entrepreneurs", etc. Those rely on Sun Tzu's work being generic enough it can be applied to whatever, so it's hilarious to find out it maybe wasn't... exposing those derivative books as the trash they truly are.
"The Art of War is traditionally attributed to a military general from the late 6th century BC known as "Master Sun" (Mandarin: "Sunzi", earlier "Sun Tzu"), though its earliest parts probably date to at least 100 years later."
It's a long living speculation that Sun's clan warfare was a polar opposite of the book, and that them spreading their military methods was world's first examples of disinformation warfare.
They teach sons of all nobles the thing, and when the time comes to slash throats, they use them being "gridlocked" into their thinking against them.
Zuo Zhuan is an awesome book with lots of stories about strategic thinking. The writing style is also very succinct and quite pleasant to read (require knowledge about classic Chinese for sure). One good example is the following piece which I read from my high school textbook.
It describes how an excellent diplomat manipulated vulnerabilities between countries to turn down a conflict. It happened in 630BC, but still applies to today.
> We need to stop untethering the text from the historical and cultural milieu of its origination
The reason we still read these people at all (Thucydides, Machievelli, Clausewitz, Sun Tzu, etc) is because their work transcends "the historical and cultural milieu of its origination".
Time (and the accumulation of human opinions) is the real judge here and in the case of all of these writers, time has judged that they are, in fact, saying something eternally true about politics and fighting wars that transcends their historical circumstances. If you want to delve into their historical backgrounds, that's great -- and perhaps it will lead to new, valid intepretations. But it isn't wrong to read them as political philosophy, which is what we generally do.
Isn't it even disputed among experts whether Machiavelli's the Prince is satirical or not?
I can't possibly imagine how one can both treat a source as holding profound and transcendent views and be uninterested or unsure of what the author meant when writing it; at that point it seems that the literary work is merely an excuse for the reader to project their own ideas into an authorative source, and the work is only valued for its prestige.
As eru tersely pointed out, most contemporary literary analysis and criticism is no longer based on what the author meant, but instead based on how the work itself, irrespective of the author's intent or the context within which it was written. Thus, instead of a search for "the truth" as expressed by the author's inner thinking, the question instead becomes how work affects readers. This, obviously, bothers many people, but is, IMO, a valuable approach.
Thus, "project[ing] their own ideas into an authoritative source" is perfectly fine if phrased a bit more nicely. Perhaps more like "adapt our understanding of the source material in light of contemporary thinking". Not to say that context doesn't matter at all, especially with translations. But in the end, when analyzing works such as "Art of War", it's unavoidable that we project our current context onto its text. As post-modernists point out, we cannot escape our biases, so why pretend to do so?
I can understand the concept of "how the work affects readers" in terms of, say, literary value (for lack of a better word) of a novel, or poetry.
It's much harder to translate that idea to essays or educative works, though.
The art of war is basically a text book, so it's as literal as you can get. Biases should matter about as much as reading the package leaflet of some meds, or a math book.
It's pretty obvious that the reason it's popular has more to do with the ancient and exotic origin, the suggestive title and the opportunities for the reader's self image it provides than for its actual content -at least in the West. But considering this effect anything other than an expression of ignorance, and actually judging the work for its unintended ability to cause such effect, feels... I don't know,a travesty. Almost as superficial as judging the book for the covers' drawing or its usefulness as a doorstop.
You're right. And this projection is both inevitable and welcome.
But you must admit it's at least a bit funny if when you read Sun Tzu's "attack your enemy's allies" you understand "work to undermine the alliance, maybe sow discontent so that they turn against each other" but wise old Sun Tzu actually meant "physically stab your enemy's ally with your sword. Right through the heart. That's what 'attacking' means, right? What do you mean 'undermine', anyway?".
> I can't possibly imagine how one can both treat a source as holding profound and transcendent views and be uninterested or unsure of what the author meant when writing it; at that point it seems that the literary work is merely an excuse for the reader to project their own ideas into an authorative source, and the work is only valued for its prestige.
What I've found is that, in critiques of an earlier philosopher, the most common attitude is an acceptance of key insights, but debate over their implications and the extent of their application. So, whether or not you see The Prince as satire, it is valued for its skepticism of abstract ideas and insistence on realpolitik. That is the transcendent perspective of The Prince, and that isn't really debated, as far as I know.
When I read Machievelli in school, we learned that he was a republican but that The Prince was really, truly advice for autocrats. There's no contradiction here because Machievlli is a realist and he understands that autocracies happen and sometimes they might even be necessary (hey, we in the US have martial law for a reason).
>> We need to stop untethering the text from the historical and cultural milieu of its origination
> The reason we still read these people at all (Thucydides, Machievelli, Clausewitz, Sun Tzu, etc) is because their work transcends "the historical and cultural milieu of its origination".
Yes and no. IIRC, Sun Tzu strongly advises against attacking walled cities. The edition of Sun Tzu that I read made the point that reason for that was because, at his time, siege engine technology was not up to the task. In Sun Pin, written a few hundred years later, the advice changed.
There's a core there that does transcend "the historical and cultural milieu of its origination," but you kinda need to tether the text to its milieu to find it.
>There's a core there that does transcend "the historical and cultural milieu of its origination," but you kinda need to tether the text to its milieu to find it.
Strong agree. Clausewitz has a whole Chapter on billeting armies. The advice presented is mostly of use to historians. Not everything he wrote was timeless. Applying a work in a modern context involves understanding its limitations and the context in which it was written.
Why did Clausewitz think X? If X is still relevant today, is it relevant for the same reasons that it was 200 years ago?
Does this idea X truly transcend time, or are there just many important similarities between our time and the time of Clausewitz?
I think the author here somewhat poisoned the well by starting with Clausewitz’s annoyance at the trope of invoking ancient history. The fact is, Clausewitz, Sun Tzu, Thucydides, and the rest are simultaneously both best understood within their historical context while simultaneously being timeless. How can that be? In the words of a devoted student of military history, James Mattis:
“Ultimately, a real understanding of history means that we face NOTHING new under the sun. For all the “4th Generation of War” intellectuals running around today saying that the nature of war has fundamentally changed, the tactics are wholly new, etc, I must respectfully say. “Not really”. Alexander the Great would not be in the least bit perplexed by the enemy that we face right now in Iraq, and our leaders going into this fight do their troops a disservice by not studying (studying, vice just reading) the men who have gone before us.”
> Alexander the Great would not be in the least bit perplexed by the enemy that we face right now in Iraq, and our leaders going into this fight do their troops a disservice by not studying (studying, vice just reading) the men who have gone before us.”
Alexander would just marry off tribal chieftain's daughters to his generals and move on to the next trouble spot, seems like a hard sell with today's mores & norms.
I think this line, and in fact the entire essay, isn't meant for general people, rather fellow academics. In the very next sentences author writes- "The Art of War’s brevity and malleability will ensure it remains a popular and frequently quoted classic in the West. But for those seeking deeper insight into the evolution of Chinese strategic thinking, it remains an important but insufficient means to that end."
I think a key point of the article is that The Art of War is actually way more literal and immediate than most people think it is. So if Sun Tzu wasn't talking in strategic generalities, but actually giving practical advice for the realities of his time (social, technological, etc) it's mistaken to "untether" it from its milieu, and also mistaken to consider it as a template for modern-day advice.
Like "print" really means to make hardcopy output on paper, and not some generalities about output that can go anywhere. We shouldn't cacsually untether that from the original context and use it in a terminal emulator, let alone for generating part of a web page.
People tend to consider philosophy/strategy in way more generalizable terms than tech words like "print". But what if Sun Tzu wasn't really all that generalizable?
What if he was literally telling you how to put an arrow through the eye of the enemy general? How do you write a self-help book "based on The Art of War" out of that? (You can still derive general meaning that wasn't put there by Sun Tzu, but it's a lot harder!)
Another expression for "eternally true" is often "bloody obvious" though. And even in cases where it isn't, the first source is not usually the one we go back to; it's certainly not true that we all keep reading Euclid's Elements to learn about the deep mysteries of maths.
No, just being right is an insufficient explanation for why textbooks will obtain the mythical status of the works you reference.
A young Napoleon arrives on the scene with abook under his arm symbolizing his years of study of military history. He finds the French generals and leaders in a pub. Writing in The Art of War some 2,500 years ago, Sun Tzu postulated two dialectic forces: Zheng is the “ordinary” element that fixes the enemy in place.
This article about the context of Sun Tzu, made me remember my own discoveries about the bible (disclaimer: I am a firmly Christian)
A lot of the passages that seem completely controversial now, can be understood if you think about what was going on.
For example, saw a bunch of people saying it was proof of misoginy the fact the bible consider menstrual fluids "unclean", thing is, that law was enacted when they lived in a mobile tent camp, if a person with a blood-transmissible disease washed on the middle of the camp water source for example, it could quickly infect everyone.
Or Paul in New Testament saying men should NOT cover their heads, make a lot of sense when you find out people at the time decided to adopt a fashion from some roman nobles that started to use robes with head covering during religious events, with the intention of appearing more spiritual.
Please don't take HN threads on generic tangents and certainly not generic religious ones. Those are likely to start religious flamewars, which is exactly what happened in this case.
My experience exactly. I've been trying to read the bible with an eye for historical context (rather than the "biblical literalism" that has been so harmful over the past two centuries or so). It helps a lot in making sense of things.
The stuff about not eating shellfish or pork is a pretty straightforward example of this: avoiding certain foods would probably increase your group's lifespan, and so gives an edge over other groups.
A certain issue involving priests and children is controversial today. Would you say that this can be understood if you consider that historically powerful men have been doing whatever they wanted and gotten away with it and organized religion has been a safe haven for them?
> For example, saw a bunch of people saying it was proof of misoginy the fact the bible consider menstrual fluids "unclean", thing is, that law was enacted when they lived in a mobile tent camp, if a person with a blood-transmissible disease washed on the middle of the camp water source for example, it could quickly infect everyone.
This is just purely ex post facto pseudo-scientific rationalism of rampant misogyny. If you want to be true to the statements made in historical sources (e.g., the bible), try to put yourself in their shoes -- in this case, imagine that you are a patriarch in a deeply misogynistic society that views women and children as property and not people. The reason for the law is thus completely justified to such a person: to them, menstrual fluid is gross and just another example of why women clearly do not have the full rights of a "real person".
Calling reasonable inference pseudoscience while assuming to read the minds of men 2000 years ago and claim misogynic inspiration for their actions is such a fucking joke.
An obvious difference is that it's the semen that makes things unclean, while for menstruation it's the woman herself that is the unclean agent.
For semen, there is a clear distinction that it is anything it touches becomes dirty and needs washing. But for menstruation its whatever the woman touches that becomes unclean (and for seven days it seems!), not merely what the blood touches.
The original comment thus provides an explanation for why these two cases are treated separately, which is basically what you asked for.
> you are a patriarch in a deeply misogynistic society that views women and children as property and not people
It is interesting that we hate cynicism when expressed by others yet we feel entitled to express it ourselves. Sometimes it is a good idea, when judging the behaviour of others, to consider options other than malice.
I think it's a little bit of both. Scientific-type thinking is not restricted to modern times and a lot can be deduced simply from observation, given a large enough sample size.
On the other hand, a broken clock is right twice a day.
Menstrual blood is pretty gross though. It's not misogynistic to recognize that. Plenty of gender neutral bodily fluids are gross too. Another person's bodily fluids in general are gross.
The questioner is asking whose military escapades influenced the development of this Chinese classic on military theory. Napoleon's escapades probably strike the longest shadow on military theory books--both Clausewitz and Jomini wrote their books based on their experiences in the Napoleonic Wars.
It's actually an interesting question, given that the book is usually studied in striking divorce from its historical context, especially in popular analysis.
I can't help but think you completely missed the point of the article with a response like that. Clausewitz and Sun Tzu both reacted to the ideas of other generals. Napoleon, in the case of Clausewitz, and apparently this duke of Song for Sun Tzu. Understanding this can help us understand his writings better.
So according to you, who responded to Julius Caesar in a way that's relevant to what Mao did? What did Sun Yat-sen do that requires a comparison to Alexander in order to better understand him? Or are you just listing random names without having read the article?
Also the story becomes more deep when you realize that there are story elements where they act like the character would coincidentally slip into a situation but actually was probably stupid on purpose to create a much better outcome for himself. My favorite example being when Caocao fails to kill Dong Zhuo who is laying in front of him sleeping. If you are a mass murderer like either of these two there is almost no chance to fail to assassinate someone laying in front of you sleeping. And yet Caocao did.
What happened due to this failure? The rebels took him in and started to listen to his ideas, when before they ignored him due to his low background. Also one of his biggest competitors, Wang Yun, who coincidentally is the owner of the knife used in the attempted murder.
What would have happened if he had successfully killed Dong Zhuo? Lu Bu probably would have killed him on the spot. Maybe he would go in history as a small hero but he would have never become emperor.