The Dao of the Military: Liu An's Art of War

177 Pages·2012·1.788 MB·English

by  Andrew Seth Meyer, John S. Major

CUP/ Lisa Hamm
Meyer: 3/8" text bulk, 5.5 x 8.25, 4-c process only, gloss lam
“The Dao of the Military summarizes and reflects on many aspects of the theory and practice of M
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warfare developed in the Warring States period. it incorporates much of the theorizing of several y
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traditions of military thought not well represented in the Seven Military Classics, and it is an im- r
portant and valuable treatise that enriches our understanding of the history of Chinese military , T
theory, the military tradition, Chinese intellectual history, and early China studies.” r
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robin D. S. yates, McGill University n
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Master Sun’s The Art of War is by no means the only ancient Chinese treatise on military af- t
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fairs. one chapter in the Huainanzi, an important compendium of philosophy and political r
theory written in the second century b.c.e., synthesizes the entire corpus of military literature
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inherited from the Chinese classical era. Drawing on all major, existing military writings, as
well as other lost sources, it assesses tactics and strategy, logistics, organization, and political
economy, as well as cosmology and the fundamental morality of warfare. Th
of the
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This powerful work set out to become the last word on military matters, subsuming and re- D
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placing all preceding literature. Written under the sponsorship of liu an, king of Huainan, a
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the Huainanzi’s “military methods” emphasize the preservation of peace as the ultimate value
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to be served by the military, insisting that the army can be effectively and rightly used only f
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when defending the sacred hereditary position of the emperor and his vassals. This position h
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stands in stark contrast to that of The Art of War, which prioritizes the enrichment and em-
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powerment of the state. liu an’s philosophy also argues that military success depends on the Liu An's Art of War
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personal cultivation of the commander and that deception is not enough to secure victory. i
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only a commander with the exceptional qualities of insight and cognition, developed through r
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a program of meditative practice and yogic refinement, can effectively control and interpret : translated,

the strategic situation. andrew Seth Meyer offers both a full translation of this text and an L with an introduction, by
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extensive analysis of its historical context. His thorough treatment relates liu an’s teachings u
A Andrew Seth
to issues in Chinese philosophy, culture, religion, and history, helping to interpret their un-
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common message. ’s

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“The Dao of the Military makes a welcome addition to the growing literature on early Chinese t

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strategy. The translation is exacting and felicitous. it should serve well for those interested in
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the history of Chinese thought and Chinese military thought.” W
Victor H. Mair, University of Pennsylvania a
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Andrew Seth Meyer is associate professor of history at Brooklyn College. With John S.
Major, Sarah a. Queen, and Harold D. roth, he is the cotranslator and coeditor of The Huai-
nanzi and The Essential Huainanzi.
isbn: 978-0-231-15333-1 c
Cover image: Wellcome library, london. o
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Daoyin tu, a painting excavated from the Mawangdui u
tomb, sealed in 168 b.c.E. a chart for leading and m
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guiding people in exercise for improving health and i
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treating pain. The original is in the Hunan Provincial
Columbia University Press New York Museum, Changsha, China.
www.cup.columbia.edu • printed in the u.s.a. Translations from the Asian Classics
THE DAO OF THE MILITARY
Translations from the Asian Classics
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t ranslations from the asian classics
Editorial Board Wm. Theodore de Bary, Chair
Paul Anderer Wei Shang
Donald Keene Haruo Shirane
George A. Saliba Burton Watson
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Th e
DAO
of the
M I L I TA R Y
Liu An’s Art of War
Translated, with an Introduction, by Andrew Seth Meyer

columbia university press N ew York
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Columbia University Press
Publishers Since 1893
New York Chichester, West Sussex
cup.columbia.edu
Copyright © 2012 Columbia University Press
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bing lüe xun. English.
The dao of the military : Liu An’s art of war / translated, with an
introduction, by Andrew Seth Meyer ; foreword by John S. Major.
pages cm. — (Translations from the Asian classics)
Translation previously published in: The Huainanzi. New York :
Columbia University Press, 2010.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-231-15332-4 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-0-231-15333-1 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-0-231-52688-3 (e-book)
1. Military art and science—Early works to 1800. 2. Taoist
literature, Chinese—Early works to 1800. I. Liu, An, 179–
122 B.C. II. Meyer, Andrew Seth, translator, writer of added
commentary. III. Title.
U101.B5713 2012
355.02—dc23
2011047621
Columbia University Press books are printed on permanent and
durable acid-free paper.
This book is printed on paper with recycled content.
Printed in the United States of America
c 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
p 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
S
N Cover image: Wellcome Library, London
L
iv
01_meye15332_fm.indd 4 5/3/12 9:39 AM
Contents
Foreword by John S. Major vii
A Note on the Translation xv
INTRODUCTION 1
The Terrain of Life and Death: “Bing lüe” in the Discourse
of “Military Methods” from the Warring States to the Han 4
Root and Branches: “Bing lüe” in the H uainanzi 28
Sustain the Perishing, Revive the Extinct: “Bing lüe” and
the Court of Huainan 36
Spiritlike and Enlightened: “Bing lüe” and Daoism 54
“Bing lüe” Past and Present 73
AN OVERVIEW OF THE MILITARY 89
Bibliography 141
Index 147
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Foreword
When an ancient Chinese military theorist wrote the classic Mili-
tary Methods of Master Sun ( popularly known in English asT he
Art of War ), he could have had no idea that his book would still be
famous nearly twenty-five hundred years in the future, consulted as a
guide to strategy not only on the battlefield but also in adversarial situ-
ations of all kinds. Master Sun’s famously cryptic aphorisms, such as
“When you assemble your army and formulate strategy, you must be
inscrutable,” have inspired thousands of participants in management
seminars around the globe. Many people today who know nothing else
about China know of The Art of War. Less widely understood is that
The Art of War is not unique; there are a number of ancient Chinese
treatises on military matters, and they are by no means all the same.
What we have chosen to call The Dao of the Military: Liu An’s Art of
War is one such alternative “Art of War.” It comprises “An Overview
of the Military,” a chapter in the Huainanzi , an important compen-
dium of philosophy and political theory written under the sponsorship
of Liu An, king of Huainan, and presented to the imperial throne in
139  b.c.e . As these pages will show, its view of military matters is quite
different from that of The Art of War , and different in interesting and
important ways.
The publication of the first complete English translation of the
Huainanzi in 2010 made that encyclopedic Han-dynasty work acces-
sible to a wide audience for the first time. The product of more than
twelve years of toil by a team that included Andrew Meyer and me,
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viii Foreword
along with Sarah Queen and Harold Roth, the Huainanzi translation
invites scholarly attention on a text that has hitherto been somewhat
neglected by students of early Chinese intellectual history. That state-
ment requires some qualification. Every early China specialist for gen-
erations past has known of the Huainanzi. It is described in standard
reference works, and many sourcebooks and anthologies of Chinese
literature include at least a few passages from the text. A number of
translations into English and other Western languages of single chap-
ters or small groups of chapters have been published in recent de-
cades, along with a few interpretive scholarly works. Nevertheless, it
has generally been the case that few people have actually read substan-
tial portions of the Huainanzi , certainly not in the original classical
Chinese. The Huainanzi h as been a text to dip into rather than to read
extensively, a text to mine for an apt quotation or a passage parallel
to one in some better-known text rather than one to read for its own
intrinsic interest. The book’s ancient bibliographical classification as a
“miscellaneous” work, though originally not pejorative, encouraged a
view of the H uainanzi as a mélange of quotations from earlier sources,
an unoriginal compendium of relatively minor importance.
T he new English translation of the Huainanzi radically challenges
that view by taking seriously the claims made for the text by its patron
and general editor, Liu An (179?–122 b.c.e. ). In his poetical postface
to the work (chapter 21, the final chapter of the text), Liu An makes two
audacious claims for his book: first, that it so effectively synthesizes the
best features of all previous books as to render those source texts super-
fluous, and second, that its reach is so broad and comprehensive as to
make unnecessary the writing of any other works in the future. Both
claims are obviously wildly overblown, but they nevertheless make
clear that the Huainanzi was intended as a comprehensive survey, for
a royal audience, of all the essential knowledge of its era. And read-
ing the text from beginning to end makes clear that far from being a
miscellaneous grab bag of quotations, the H uainanzi is carefully struc-
tured to embody a particular view of the cosmos, humankind’s place
in it, and the role of human culture and institutions in a well-ordered
society. Read from that point of view, it offers a commodious and fasci-
nating window into the intellectual life of early Han China.
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Foreword ix
As longtime students of the Huainanzi , we hope that the publica-
tion of our complete English translation will prove to be a valuable
stimulus to the small but growing field of Huainanzi studies, encour-
aging (especially) younger scholars to explore in depth some of the
many potential topics of enquiry opened up by the translation itself.
The Dao of the Military is one of the first to take up that challenge. I
am delighted that one of the members of the translation team has now
taken the further step of analyzing a chapter of the Huainanzi in much
greater detail than was possible in the brief chapter introduction in the
complete translation. I hope that the next few years will see a surge of
studies of particular chapters or themes in the H uainanzi, all of which
will enrich our understanding of early Han thought.
The book you are now reading contains the text of Andrew Meyer’s
translation of chapter 15 of the Huainanzi, “An Overview of the Mili-
tary,” essentially unchanged (except for the insertion of additional
notes) from its appearance in the complete translation volume. What
is new here is Meyer’s extensive analytical introduction to the chap-
ter, which brilliantly demonstrates that (true to Liu An’s vision for the
Huainanzi) the chapter is both firmly lodged in the tradition of early
Chinese military literature and approaches military matters from its
own particular and extremely interesting point of view. Far from be-
ing simply a repackaging of earlier military treatises, “An Overview of
the Military” is a strikingly original contribution to the genre. Meyer
organizes his analysis under four rubrics that cumulatively provide a
comprehensive account of the text and highlight its unique features.
T he first rubric situates “An Overview of the Military” in the con-
text of early Chinese military literature. Meyer shows that the emer-
gence of that literature at the beginning of the Warring States period
coincided with the development of large-scale infantry armies and cor-
responding battlefield tactics; military thinkers such as the unknown
author of The Art of War began to explore the challenges and oppor-
tunities created by the changing nature of warfare. As Meyer demon-
strates, the emerging genre of military writing was highly controversial,
alarming Confucius and other masters who were committed to a social
vision in which warfare was an aristocratic pursuit hemmed about by
ritual restrictions. New forms of warfare aimed at political aggrandize-
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