Appendix VIII: Why the West Plays Chess and the East Plays Go

275 Pages·2013·4.56 MB·English

Appendix VIII

Why the West Plays Chess and the
East Plays Go:
How Classical Chinese and Ancient
Western Grammars Shaped Different
Strategies of War, Weiqi and Chess
By Peter Shotwell
© 2013

Preface

An Outline of the Essay

This is the first look in English and probably the first look anywhere into what I
see as the ultimate origins of war, go and Western chess strategies in the grammars of
ancient China and Greece. If language affects thinking and by implication, the world
views of cultures, it stands to reason that the influences in the area of strategic thinking
might be profound, especially if the languages involved in a comparative study are very
different. 1 This notion would extend to the choice and techniques of playing strategic
games that emulate war because cultures have chosen to perpetuate in the sense that,
consciously or unconsciously, they have been deemed a worthwhile activity.
Thus, in terms of go, this article will try to trace the process that led up to the
cultural integration and intense playing that began in the Han period (206 BC-220 AD)
and which followed its humble beginnings as a simple game that was used by early
Confucians in the late 4th and early to mid-3rd century BC to illustrate their evolving
ideas about filial piety and human nature. (This will be discussed later in this essay). It
will also trace the equal European fascination with chess that began around the 12th
century AD when feudal Europe began to ―see itself‖ in the game and which blossomed
into popular play in the 19th century.

1 Whether languages affect behavior is the subject of the Whorf-Sapir debates in anthropology. The general
consensus today is that they do. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity
1
After the basic differences between chess and go from the point of view of
language are examined, it will become easier to see why the Chinese style of thought—
its cultural ―matrix‖ so to speak—would develop its war strategies and absorb go so
readily after it was developed and why the West would develop different war strategies
that are reflected in its attraction to chess. 2
David Moser‘s PhD thesis, along with A.C. Graham‘s Disputers of the Tao and
Chad Hansen‘s A Daoist Theory of Chinese Thought provided much of the linguistic
material for this essay. 3 They all noted that a distinguishing feature of these two
languages is that apparently from the beginning, the West had a class of marked
abstract nouns along with the verb ―to be‖ and other features in their language that
China did not have.
This meant that the West, unlike China, constructed abstract nouns which didn‘t
physically exist but were treated as if they did by a process known as hypostatization or
reification. That is, they regarded abstractions as having an independent existence
though their ontological status is open to question. (This term comes from the Greek
hupostatos, ―placed under,‖ ―substantial,‖ which is from huphistasthai, ―to stand
under,‖ ―to exist‖). For example, one can see ―white‖ but not ―white-ness‖ and it is the
same for ―happy‖ and ―happy-ness,‖ etc.
To fully understand the background of these developments, Part One reviews
the effects of 550 years of constant warfare in China between 771 and 221 BC, when,
cut off from the rest of the world, about 150 cities and states fought each other and
reduced themselves to one. This, along with the lack of abstraction and ―to be,‖ had
strong effects on the social, political, economic, philosophical and strategic spheres, one
of which was the development of the ―Hundred Contending Schools of Philosophy‖ as
Chinese philosophers tried to explain the evolving nature of the new reality—what it
was and what it was not, and what should be done or not done about it. One
consequence was that 70% of early Chinese books, many of them now-famous (the
Daodejing for example) concerned military matters, though often (to us) in a veiled
manner.
One of the theories that developed was the relativism of Daoism, whose tenets
included ―action through non-action‖ and how the ―Soft‖ can conquer the ―Hard.‖ Thus,
as the states grew fewer and the initial feudalistic style of fighting evolved into mass-
warfare with armies of hundreds of thousands, a new kind of non-feudal leadership was
called for so a ―Darker‖ side of Daoism emerged. Its principles and strategies eventually
appeared in books like Sunzi‘s The Art of War, was summed up in the ―Thirty-six

2 The Greek, Arabic and Western Indo-European languages in countries where chess is extensively played and
interwoven into the culture is called “the West” in this article. It includes Russia but not India which has the verb
“to be” and where chess may have been invented but the game never became important in a cultural sense. Russia
uses the verb in the past and future tenses and, in not-so-distant times, “to be” was used in the present tense.
3 David Moser; 1996 Univ. of Michigan PhD thesis Abstract Thinking and Thought in Ancient Chinese and Early
Greek A.C. Graham; Disputers of the Tao; Open Air Press; 1989 Chad Hansen; A Daoist Theory of Chinese Thought;
Oxford Univ. Press; 1992
2
Strategies,‖ which are discussed in Part Three and first appeared on go boards in the
beginning of the Han dynasty. 4

Part Two covers the effects of how the linguistic differences between East and
West affected mental attitudes, strategies and their entire cultures, including the board
games they played. What is presented below in ―A Short Overview of the Language
Thesis‖ is expanded in great detail and is followed by quotations from early and later
Chinese weiqi players that show the links between Sunzi‘s ideas and weiqi strategies
that developed after its ―feudal‖ stage, which is when early Confucians wrote about it as
a simple game. Once the linkage with Sunzi‘s strategies was established and expanded,
the game became more intriguing and so was accepted (or rejected by some) into the
culture of the literati and hence the game became an acceptable part of the ―cultural
matrix‖ of the nation after peace was established in 206 BC. These developments are
compared and contrasted with the similar linguistic origins of the principals of Western
war strategies that became embodied in chess and led to its mass acceptance and
improvement of play that followed its own ―feudal‖ days. This change-over also
coincided with the changes in European feudal-style warfare that were uprooted by
Napoleon‘s adroit guidance of the mass-armies of France in the early 19th century.

Part Three of the essay briefly discusses the different attitudes about ―cunning‖
in the two cultures—it is prized in China and despised in most areas of the West (think
of Wall Street, lawyers and card sharks). Then it greatly expands on a section that had
to be, for the most part, deleted from the revised edition of my first go book, Go! More
Than a Game (Tuttle Publishing Revised 2011) that dealt with the Thirty-six Strategies,
which are a compendium of Dark Daoist thought. The strategies are accompanied by
the best military examples of their ancient use from many sources, along with
suggestions on how beginners can apply them to their games. There are also some
examples for stronger players.

Lastly, there is a short Coda that discusses the ―anti-strategy‖ of how to lose a
―won‖ game or war. It concerns the fall of the dynasty of the Qin in 207 BC, only 14
years after they had swept all before them and united China for the first time. This
happened because they ignored the basic tenet of Dark Daoism that had brought them
to power—that one must change with the changing times. Instead, they weakened
themselves because they could not shut down their millions-of-men war and
construction machines. Instead, they were kept employed for useless activities such as
external wars and the building of the Great Wall, the Emperor‘s tomb and many other
projects until internal revolts succeeded in toppling them.

4 For example, Huan Tan (43 BC-28 AD) in Xinlun advised that the best approach in the game was to
spread your pieces widely so as to encircle the opponent. Second best was to attack and choke off enemy
formations. The worst strategy was to cling to a defence of your own territory. This seems to echo Sunzi’s
advice to first attack his alliances, then his armies, and last of all, his walled cities. In go terms, this might mean to
first attack his connections, then his solid groups and last his territory.

3
I want to note that this is only a brief survey of some very complex matters
which, since all these elements have never been put together in a single work, was as
much to satisfy my own interest as well as those of readers who want to know about
the historical backgrounds of go and chess. When appropriate, weiqi, the Chinese word
for go is used.
The main article and its appendices along with my other writings can be found in
this e-Library of the American Go Association at www.usgo.org/bobhighlibrary. Many of
them are summed up in the aforementioned Go! More Than a Game.
I should note that no single system of spelling Chinese names and places is
used. And, as in my other articles, nearly every sentence could be footnoted, but I have
done so only in the most important places or where there is controversy.
I gratefully thank sinologist David Moser, who was not a go player but whose
PhD thesis provided much of the framework for this essay and who was also kind
enough to review it with much constructive criticism. Many thanks are also due to John
Fairbairn, Roy Laird, Alex Trotter and Christine Mathieu for their reviews of its initial
phase.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
PREFACE
An Outline of the Essay
A Short Overview of the Language Thesis

PART ONE
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND AND THE EVOLUTION OF EARLY
CHINESE WARFARE
I. Other Isolated ―Fishbowls‖ of the World
II. The Spring and Autumn Period (771-481, 475, 468 or 403 BC)

Background
Covenants
What They Thought About
Sacrifices, Divination and the Zhouyi
The Armies, the Battles, the Ancestral Spirits and the Cosmic Order
Political and Military Developments

III. The Warring States Period (481, 475 or 403-221 BC)

Introduction
Technology and ―Progress‖—The Background
Oaths and Bonds Between Unequals Replace Covenants Between Equals
Geopolitics in the 3rd century BC

IV. The One Hundred Contending Schools of Thought
Was Warfare a Natural or Unnatural Condition of Humanity?
The Six Philosophies Organized by Court Historian Sima Tan (165-110
BC)
The School of Confucianism (Rujia)
The School of Legalism (Fajia)
The School of Mozi (Mojia)
The School of Yin-Yang
The School of Names (Mingjia)
The Schools of (Philosophical) Daoism (Daojia)
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Yang Zhu
Primitive Daoism
Military Daoism (Bingjia or Guidao)

Four Schools of the Hanshu
The School of Diplomacy
or
The School of Vertical and Horizontal Alliances
The School of Miscellany
The School of Small Talk
The School of the Agriculturalists
Changing Over Time: The Passage from the 4th to the 3rd Centuries BC
Several Hundred Years Later: Sima Tan‘s Thoughts While he Organized
the ―Schools‖ for Posterity
―Daoist‖ to ―Daoism‖

V. The Daoist School of the Military—Sunzi, Sunbin, the Arts of War and the
Bingjia or Guidao

Background and Review
Two Generals and Two Arts of War
The Waging of War as an Intellectual and Psychological Endeavor
The Way of the ―Dark Daoists‖
Summation

PART TWO

LANGUAGE AND THE GREAT CULTURAL DIVIDE BETWEEN CHINA
AND THE WEST AS REFLECTED IN DIFFERENT WAR STRATEGIES
AND THE PLAYING OF GO AND CHESS

I. Introduction and General Overview

―Abstract‖ Greek vs. ―Non-abstract‖ Classical Chinese
Preliminary Remarks on the Basic Elements of ―Concrete‖ Weiqi vs.
―Abstract‖ Chess
Chess in the Middle Ages
The Strong Queen Arises

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II. The Absence or Presence of Abstract Nouns, the Verb ―To Be‖ and Other
Linguistic Features Developed and Shaped the Different Philosophies and
Resulting Strategic Thinking of Early Greece and Classical China

Greece and the West—A Two-Tiered World
To Be or not to Be: Chess and the Military in the West
The Chinese Perspective
Chinese ―Ideas‖ in Terms of Psychology and Philosophy
Ambiguity and ―Scaling Down‖

III. The Inner-Complexities of the Two Types of Perceived Reality
IV. The Chinese Written Language Encourages the Playing of Weiqi

V. Something and Nothing
VI. Qi and Yin-Yang

VII. Correlative Thinking: The Formation of the World of Yin and Yang from Qi
VIII. Some Linguistic and Mental Consequences of Binary Thinking and
Correlative Cosmos Building
IX. dao—―The ways‖

X. A Short Review

XI. A Correlative Cosmology of the Universe

The Context: Time-Space and Directionality
Five Phase (Element) Theory
XII. Extreme Correlation: A Note on the Zhouyi and Yijing (The Books of
Changes)

XIII. Two Opposing Cosmologies
The East: Divisions of the Universe
The West: The Souls of Ambrose and Augustine
Humans and the Earth in China
The Grid in China

XIV. ―Weiqi-Think‖ as Embedded in the Spontaneity of the Zhuangzi, the dao of
Mastery, Strategic Thought in Rhetoric, the Patterns of Poetry, and the Language
of Aesthetics
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Zhuangzi, Spontaneity and the dao of Mastery
Rhetoric and Strategic Thinking
A Note on the Characters in Early Greek and Chinese Literature and More
on Early Chess Pieces
Poetry
Aesthetics
XV. As China Begins to Play ―Real‖ Weiqi, Negative and Positive Reactions of the
Literati Appear

Some Negative Reactions of the Literati
Some Positive Reactions of the Literati
The Qijing Shisanpian: Some Uses of Dark Daoism in Weiqi
A Translation of the Yi Zhi

PART THREE
THE THIRTY-SIX STRATEGIES IN WAR, PEACE AND WEIQI

I. Western and Eastern Attitudes Toward the Ideas and Uses of Cunning

The West
China

II. An Introduction to the Thirty-six Strategies

Note: Beginning and some advanced go examples accompany the Strategies.

III. Two Detailed Examples

The 15th Strategy: ―Lure the Tiger Down From the Mountain‖

Mao Zedong and Chiang Kai-shek Play the Tiger Game
Mao Zedong, Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger Play the Tiger Game
Chinese Business Negotiators Play the Tiger Game with Westerners in
Beijing in the 1980s
The 23rd Strategy: ―Befriend a Distant Enemy to Attack One Nearby‖

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III. The Thirty-six Strategies
Strategies for When You Have Superior Resources

1. Cross the Sea without Heaven‘s (or the Emperor‘s) Knowledge
2. Besiege Wei to Rescue Zhao
3. Murder with a Borrowed Sword
4. Take One‘s Ease While the Enemy Becomes Exhausted
5. Loot a Burning House
6. Make Noise in the East, Attack in the West

Strategies for When the Two Forces Are Equal
7. Make Something Out of Nothing
8. Openly Repair the Gallery Road, Secretly March to Chencang
9. Leisurely Watch the Campfires From Across the River
or
Relax on the Mountain, Watch the Tigers Fight Below
10. Hide Your Dagger in a Smile
11. Let the Plum Tree Die to Save the Peach Tree
12. If You Chance Upon a Sheep, Be Sure to Steal It

Strategies for Attacking

13. Beat the Grass to Startle (or Frighten) the Snake
14. Find Reincarnation in Another‘s Corpse
15. Lure the Tiger Down from the Mountain
17. Cast a Brick to Attract Jade
18. Catch the Leader to Catch the Led

A Note on How the Tiger Game Perhaps Fits into This Section of the
Thirty-six Strategies

Strategies for When Conditions are Chaotic

19. Steal the Firewood From Under the Caldron
20. Muddy the Waters to Catch the Fish
21. The Golden Cicada Sloughs Its Skin
22. Lock the Door to Seize the Thieves
23. To Attack Your Neighbor, Befriend Far Away States
24. Obtain Safe Passage from Guo to Attack Yu

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Strategies to Take What Your Opponent Has

25. Steal the Beams and Replace the Pillars
26. Point at the Mulberry and Curse the Locust Tree
27. Feign Foolishness, Madness or Drunkenness
28. Remove the Ladder After the Enemy is on the Roof
or
Climb Up On the Roof and Remove the Ladder
29. Silk Flowers Blossom in the Tree
30. The Host Becomes the Guest; the Guest Becomes the Host
Strategies for When Everything Seems Lost

31. The Beauty Trap
33. Use the Enemy‘s Agents Against Him
34. The Self-Torture Scheme
35. The Interwoven Stratagems
36. Run Away

CODA

An Anti-Strategy: How to Lose a ―Won‖ Game—The Fall of the Qin
Dynasty

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