Dharma & Dao

The Art of War · Chapter 6 of 13

Chapter 6

modern paraphrase of Lionel Giles's 1910 translation

Modern paraphrase. This is an AI-generated retelling in contemporary English (model: claude-opus-4-7). It is not the Lionel Giles translation. The original is one click away.

[Chang Yu tries to explain the order of the chapters as follows: “Chapter IV, on Tactical Dispositions, dealt with offense and defense; Chapter V, on Energy, dealt with direct and indirect methods. A good general first learns the theory of attack and defense, then turns to direct and indirect methods. He studies how to vary and combine these two methods before moving on to the subject of weak and strong points. The use of direct or indirect methods grows out of attack and defense, and recognizing weak and strong points depends in turn on those methods. So this chapter follows immediately after the one on Energy.”]

  1. Sūnzǐ said: Whoever reaches the battlefield first and waits for the enemy will be fresh for the fight; whoever arrives second and has to rush into battle will be exhausted.

  2. So the skilled fighter imposes his will on the enemy and does not let the enemy impose his will on him.

[One mark of a great soldier is that he fights on his own terms or does not fight at all. [1]]

  1. By dangling advantages before him, he can draw the enemy in of his own accord; or by inflicting harm, he can keep the enemy from coming near.

[In the first case he lures him with bait; in the second he strikes some important point the enemy must defend.]

  1. If the enemy is resting, he can wear him out;

[This passage can be cited against Mei Yao-Ch’en’s reading of I. § 23.]

if he is well supplied with food, he can starve him out; if he is quietly encamped, he can force him to move.

  1. Show up at points the enemy must rush to defend; march swiftly to places where you are not expected.

  2. An army can march great distances without strain if it travels through country where the enemy is not.

[Ts’ao Kung sums it up well: “Emerge from the void [like a bolt from the blue], strike at vulnerable points, avoid places that are defended, attack where you are not expected.”]

  1. You can be sure of success in your attacks if you only attack places that are undefended.

[Wang Hsi describes “undefended places” as “weak points—where the general lacks ability or the troops lack spirit; where the walls are not strong enough or precautions not strict enough; where relief comes too late, or supplies are too scant, or the defenders are at odds with each other.”]

You can ensure the safety of your defense if you only hold positions that cannot be attacked.

[That is, positions free of the weaknesses listed above. There is a subtle point in interpreting this second clause. Tu Mu, Ch’en Hao, and Mei Yao-ch’en take it to mean: “To make your defense completely safe, you must defend even places not likely to be attacked”; and Tu Mu adds: “How much more, then, those that will be attacked.” Taken this way, however, the clause balances less well with the one before it—always a consideration in the strongly antithetical style natural to Chinese. Chang Yu therefore comes closer to the mark: “The skilled attacker flashes down from the heights of heaven [see IV. § 7], so the enemy cannot guard against him. Thus the places I will attack are precisely those the enemy cannot defend… The skilled defender hides in the deepest recesses of the earth, so the enemy cannot guess where he is. Thus the places I will hold are precisely those the enemy cannot attack.”]

  1. So that general is skilled in attack whose opponent does not know what to defend; and he is skilled in defense whose opponent does not know what to attack.

[An aphorism that captures the whole art of war.]

  1. Divine art of subtlety and secrecy! Through you we learn to be invisible, through you inaudible;

[Literally, “without form or sound,” meaning of course as far as the enemy is concerned.]

and so we hold the enemy’s fate in our hands.

  1. You can advance and be utterly irresistible if you strike at the enemy’s weak points; you can retreat and be safe from pursuit if your movements are quicker than his.

  2. If we want to fight, the enemy can be forced into an engagement even if he is sheltered behind high ramparts and a deep ditch. All we need do is attack some other place that he will have to come to defend.

[Tu Mu says: “If the enemy is the invader, we can cut his lines of communication and occupy the roads by which he will have to return; if we are the invaders, we may aim our attack at the sovereign himself.” Clearly Sūnzǐ, unlike certain generals in the late Boer war, was no believer in frontal attacks.]

  1. If we do not want to fight, we can prevent the enemy from engaging us even if the lines of our camp are merely scratched on the ground. All we need do is throw something strange and baffling in his way.

[This very terse phrase is paraphrased intelligibly by Chia Lin: “even though we have built neither wall nor ditch.” Li Ch’uan says: “we confuse him with strange and unusual dispositions”; and Tu Mu nails the meaning with three illustrative stories—one about Zhūgě Liàng, who, while holding Yang-p’ing and about to be attacked by Ssū-mǎ Yì, suddenly lowered his banners, stopped the drums, and threw open the city gates, leaving only a few men sweeping and sprinkling the ground. The unexpected sight had the intended effect, for Ssū-mǎ Yì, suspecting an ambush, actually pulled back his army and retreated. So what Sūnzǐ is advocating here is nothing more or less than the well-timed use of “bluff.”]

  1. By finding out the enemy’s dispositions while keeping ours hidden, we can keep our forces concentrated while the enemy’s must be divided.

[The conclusion may not be obvious, but Chang Yu (following Mei Yao-ch’en) rightly explains it: “If the enemy’s dispositions are visible, we can go at him as a single body; meanwhile, our own dispositions being kept secret, the enemy will have to divide his forces to guard against attacks from every direction.”]

  1. We can form one unified body while the enemy must split into pieces. So a whole will be pitted against separate parts of a whole, which means we shall be many against the enemy’s few.

  2. And if we can attack an inferior force with a superior one, our opponents will be in serious trouble.

  3. The place where we mean to fight must not be made known; for then the enemy will have to prepare against possible attack at several different points;

[Sheridan once explained General Grant’s victories by saying that “while his opponents were kept fully busy wondering what he was going to do, he was thinking mostly about what he was going to do himself.”]

and with his forces spread in many directions, the numbers we face at any given point will be proportionally few.

  1. If the enemy strengthens his front, he weakens his rear; if he strengthens his rear, he weakens his front; if he strengthens his left, he weakens his right; if he strengthens his right, he weakens his left. If he sends reinforcements everywhere, he will be weak everywhere.

[In Frederick the Great’s Instructions to his Generals we read: “A defensive war tends to lead us into too many detachments. Inexperienced generals try to protect every point, while those better acquainted with their profession, keeping only the main objective in view, guard against a decisive blow and accept small losses to avoid greater ones.”]

  1. Numerical weakness comes from having to prepare against possible attacks; numerical strength comes from forcing our adversary to make such preparations against us.

[The highest generalship, in Col. Henderson’s words, is “to compel the enemy to disperse his army, and then to concentrate superior force against each fraction in turn.”]

  1. Knowing the place and the time of the coming battle, we can concentrate from the greatest distances in order to fight.

[Sūnzǐ clearly has in mind the careful calculation of distances and masterful strategy that lets a general divide his army for a long, swift march and then make a junction at exactly the right spot and the right hour to confront the enemy in overwhelming strength. Among many such successful junctions recorded in military history, one of the most dramatic and decisive was the appearance of Blücher just at the critical moment on the field of Waterloo.]

  1. But if neither time nor place is known, the left wing will be unable to help the right, the right unable to help the left, the front unable to help the rear, or the rear to support the front. How much worse if the farthest parts of the army are anything up to a hundred li apart, and even the nearest are several li away from each other!

[The Chinese of this last sentence lacks some precision, but the picture we are meant to draw is probably that of an army advancing toward a given rendezvous in separate columns, each ordered to be there on a fixed date. If the general lets the various detachments proceed at random, with no precise orders about when and where to meet, the enemy will be able to destroy the army piecemeal. Chang Yu’s note is worth quoting: “If we do not know the place where our opponents mean to concentrate, or the day they will give battle, our unity will be lost through our defensive preparations, and the positions we hold will be insecure. Suddenly running into a powerful enemy, we shall be brought to battle in confusion, and no mutual support will be possible between wings, vanguard, or rear, especially if there is any great distance between the foremost and hindmost divisions of the army.”]

  1. Though by my reckoning the soldiers of Yuè outnumber ours, that will gain them nothing in terms of victory. I say, then, that victory can be achieved.

[Alas for these brave words! The long feud between the two states ended in 473 B.C. with the total defeat of Wú by Gōu Jiàn and its absorption into Yuè. This was no doubt long after Sūnzǐ’s death. Compare his current claim with IV. § 4. Chang Yu is the only commentator who notes the apparent discrepancy, which he explains thus: “In the chapter on Tactical Dispositions it is said, ‘One may know how to conquer without being able to do it,’ whereas here we have the statement that ‘victory can be achieved.’ The explanation is that in the earlier chapter, where offense and defense are under discussion, it is said that if the enemy is fully prepared, one cannot make certain of beating him. But the present passage refers specifically to the soldiers of Yuè who, by Sūnzǐ’s calculations, will be kept in ignorance of the time and place of the coming struggle. That is why he says here that victory can be achieved.”]

  1. Though the enemy be stronger in numbers, we may keep him from fighting. Scheme so as to discover his plans and how likely they are to succeed.

[An alternative reading offered by Chia Lin is: “Know in advance all plans that will lead to our success and to the enemy’s failure.”]

  1. Stir him up, and learn the principle behind his activity or inactivity.

[Chang Yu tells us that by noting the joy or anger shown by the enemy when disturbed in this way, we shall be able to determine whether his policy is to lie low or the opposite. He cites the action of Zhūgě Liàng, who sent the scornful gift of a woman’s headdress to Ssū-mǎ Yì in order to goad him out of his Fabian tactics.]

Force him to reveal himself, so that you can find out his vulnerable points.

  1. Carefully compare the opposing army with your own, so that you can know where strength is abundant and where it is lacking.

[Cf. IV. § 6.]

  1. In making tactical dispositions, the highest skill is to conceal them;

[The bite of the paradox is lost in translation. Concealment is perhaps not so much actual invisibility (see above, § 9) as “showing no sign” of what you intend to do, of the plans formed in your mind.]

conceal your dispositions, and you will be safe from the prying of the subtlest spies, from the schemes of the wisest minds.

[Tu Mu explains: “Though the enemy may have clever and capable officers, they will not be able to lay any plans against us.”]

  1. How victory can be produced for them out of the enemy’s own tactics—that is what most people cannot grasp.

  2. All men can see the tactics by which I conquer, but what none can see is the strategy out of which victory is born.

[That is, anyone can see superficially how a battle is won; what they cannot see is the long series of plans and combinations that preceded the battle.]

  1. Do not repeat the tactics that won you one victory; let your methods be governed by the infinite variety of circumstances.

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