The Dao of the Military: Liu An's Art of War
Andrew Seth Meyer, "The Dao of the Military: Liu An's Art of War "
English | ISBN: 0231153325 | 2012 | 176 pages | AZW3 | 1356 KB
English | ISBN: 0231153325 | 2012 | 176 pages | AZW3 | 1356 KB
Master Sun's The Art of War is by no means the only ancient Chinese treatise on military affairs. One chapter in the Huainanzi, an important compendium of philosophy and political theory written in the second century BCE, synthesizes the entire corpus of military literature 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.
This powerful work set out to become the last word on military matters, subsuming and replacing all preceding literature. Written under the sponsorship of Liu An, king of Huainan, the Huainanzi's "military methods" emphasize the preservation of peace as the ultimate value to be served by the military, insisting that the army can be effectively and rightly used only when defending the sacred hereditary position of the emperor and his vassals. This position stands in stark contrast to that of
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