Sun Tzu
Also known as Sunzi 孙子 · Sun Wu 孙武
- Dates
- c. 6th–5th c. BC (traditional)
- Era
- Spring and Autumn period, state of Wu
- Role
- General and strategist, traditional author of The Art of War
People quote the Art of War every day, and several of the most famous lines are not in the book.
Who was Sun Tzu?
Sun Tzu is the English name for Sun Wu 孙武. Tradition makes him a general of the state of Wu under King Helü, in the late Spring and Autumn period. The Shiji, written centuries later, says he came from Qi, trained Wu's army, and shared in Wu's defeat of Chu. The Zuo zhuan tells those same wars in detail, including the fall of Chu's capital Ying in 506 BC, and never mentions him. Wu Zixu is the commander that earlier record names. Whether Sun Wu was a real officer, or a name later strategists wrote under, is still open, and the man and the book should stay apart.
The Art of War is a short manual in thirteen chapters on judging a state, deceiving an enemy, and winning before the battle starts. It did not take its familiar shape in Helü's lifetime. The wording fits the Warring States, generations later. Bamboo slips found at Yinqueshan in 1972 already separate a Sunzi text from the book of Sun Bin 孙膑, a later strategist whom tradition calls a descendant. Cao Cao, in the early third century, wrote the earliest commentary that still survives. The manual is best read as a Warring States text that carries Sun Wu's name.
Key works
The Art of War 孙子兵法
Thirteen chapters, traditionally attributed to Sun Wu. The received text likely settled in the Warring States period, and it is a book of assessment, deception, terrain, and timing, not a memoir of Wu's wars.
Key ideas
诡道
War is the way of deception
The opening chapter says 兵者，诡道也 (bīng zhě, guǐ dào yě): war is the way of deception, which Lionel Giles (1910) renders 'All warfare is based on deception.' The point is what you show, not a catalogue of named tricks.
知彼知己
Know the other, know yourself
知彼知己，百战不殆 (zhī bǐ zhī jǐ, bǎi zhàn bù dài) promises that a hundred battles bring no peril. 殆 means danger, not defeat, and it does not promise a hundred victories.
不战而屈人之兵
Subdue the enemy without fighting
不战而屈人之兵，善之善者也. The highest skill is to break the enemy's resistance without a battle, and fighting and winning every time is, in this book, second best.
势
Advantage in the shape of the situation
势 (shì) is the shifting advantage you get from position, timing, and momentum. The manual treats it as something you read and build, not as a mood inside the general.
Famous episodes
Drilling the palace women
LegendTraditional; told in the Shiji
According to the Shiji, King Helü has Sun Wu drill 180 palace women, with the king's favourites as the two officers. They laugh, he repeats the order, and he executes the favourites. The rest obey, and the furious king is convinced. It is a story about authority, not a securely dated event.
The fall of Ying, without Sun Wu
History506 BC
In 506 BC Wu invaded Chu and took the capital, Ying. The Zuo zhuan, the nearest long narrative, credits the campaign to Wu's court and to Wu Zixu, and never mentions Sun Wu. The Shiji, centuries later, still places him inside that success. The war is history, and his command of it is a later claim.
Yinqueshan separates two Masters Sun
HistorySlips buried early Han; found 1972
A Han tomb at Yinqueshan in Shandong yielded bamboo copies of a Sunzi art of war and of a separate Sun Bin art of war. The find ended the habit of folding both men into one book. Sun Bin belongs to the Warring States. He is not Sun Wu, and stratagem 2, besiege Wei to rescue Zhao, is Sun Bin's story.
Myths vs facts
Sun Tzu said: keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.
That sentence is not in the thirteen chapters, in Chinese or in Giles. It is widely known from The Godfather Part II (1974), spoken by Michael Corleone. The nearest real idea is 知彼知己, know the other and know yourself.
Sun Tzu wrote the Thirty-Six Stratagems.
He did not. The compiler is unknown. The phrase about Lord Tan's thirty-six stratagems, of which running away is the best, appears in the Book of Southern Qi 南齐书, in the biography of Wang Jingze, and the thirty-six-item text with commentary surfaced in a Chengdu printing of 1941.
Sun Tzu and Sun Bin are the same person.
Sun Bin 孙膑 is a later Warring States figure. Tradition calls him a descendant of Sun Wu. The Yinqueshan slips keep the two military texts apart, and besieging Wei to rescue Zhao is Sun Bin's story, not a chapter of the Art of War.
Takeaways
- Name the chapter before you quote the Art of War.
- Learn the other side as carefully as you learn your own.
- Prefer a result you can take without a battle.
Rivals and connections
Sources
- Sima Qian, Shiji 史记, ch. 65
- Sunzi bingfa 孙子兵法
- Zuo zhuan 左传 (Wu–Chu wars; Sun Wu is absent)
- Cao Cao, commentary on the Sunzi 曹操注孙子