The Tao of War

Let me first describe what this book is, because I did not know when I ordered it, but I was pleasantly surprised. If you have read the Tao Te Ching you know that it is broken up into a lot of "chapters" each consisting of a short blip of wisdom. This book is broken up into these same chapters, with the Tao Te Ching text first, then Wang Chen's commentary discussing how this verse applies to leadership, thus the description of it as martial Tao Te Ching. Sawyer then comments on each chapter of the text. This is a book that is about Taoism more than anything else. Sawyer's commentary in the chapters discusses Wang Chen's interpretation of the Tao Te Ching, and in this commentary you will find most of what is discussed previously in the introduction, so read the background information on who Wang Chen was and the time in which he lived, and skip the rest of the introduction. This book does bring up some interesting ideas about war and peace in relation to Taoism in an abstract philosophiocal sense, but this is mostly a book about Taoism (which is why I like the book) rather than a manual on the theory of warfare or a history of Chinese warfare as I thought it would be. If you want a history of Chinese warfare, look elsewhere, and if you want theory of warfare start with a copy of Clausewitz's famous treatise "On War," then learn about the Lanchester equations of combat (search the internet), and go from there.

Ralph Sawyer is a leading scholar of Chinese warfare and has worked extensively with major military agencies, so he's the perfect author of choice to translate The Tao Of War, a martial version of the Tao Te Ching. The original author Wang Chen was a 9th-century Chinese military commander sickened by carnage and began using the ancient Tao Te Ching for peaceful purposes: his interpretations produced the first reading of it as a martial text of strategy, and Ralph Sawyer's in-depth interpretations go far in placing its military importance in modern Western hands.

The Sawyer translation of Wang Chen's T'ang Dynasty commentary on "Lao Tzu" (the "Tao Te Ching") as a guide to military and civil policy has been reissued in paperback by Westview (2003), as "The Tao of War," with Ralph D. Sawyer's name more prominently displayed than Wang Chen's, and a catalogue of Westview editions of Sawyer's books as an appendix of "Further Reading." I have reviewed the Westview edition at greater length. Both editions consist of a translation of each of the eighty-one short chapters of the "Tao Te Ching", as understood by Wang Chen, followed by Wang Chen's commentary, and a modern explication of Wang Chen. General Wang Chen's book was written around 800 C.E., and is a departure from the better-known religious and philosophical readings of the Taoist classic. As Sawyer points out, however, it agrees in basic approach, if not in details, with a number of modern attempts to understand the book as a product of the Warring States period, and concerned with problems of society and government.NOTE: The present volume should NOT be confused with a book by Diane Dreher, variously published as "The Tao of Peace: A Modern Guide to the Ancient Way of Peace and Harmony ," and "The Tao of Inner Peace: A Guide to Inner and Outer Peace."

As discreetly acknowledged on the back cover, this book was originally published in hardcover as "The Tao of Peace." That edition, published by Shambhala, clearly identified itself on its cover as a translation of a work by the T'ang Dynasty general Wang Chen (about 800 C.E.), a product of one of the classical periods of Chinese history. The Westview Press version is a little harder to recognize for what it is. In both versions, it is in fact a translation, with an introduction and commentary by the translators, of "Tao-te-Ching lun-ping yao-yi-shu," one of the more unusual of the many surviving Chinese commentaries on the "Tao Te Ching" or "Lao-Tzu." ("Daodejing" and "Laozi" in the current Pinyin transliteration; the Sawyers continue to use the familiar Wade-Giles system.) The "5000-character Classic" (as it is also known, and as Wang Chen sometimes cites it) was of exceptional importance to the T'ang; the supposed author was officially an ancestor of the dynasty, the Chinese roots of which were often questioned. The Westview edition has been repackaged, slightly revised in references to the title, and expanded by a section of "Further Reading" which is in effect a catalogue of the translators' other books on Chinese military thought for Westview, rather than for study of the "Tao-Te-Ching." (For some suggestions, see below.) Ralph D. Sawyer explains in the Preface that they have also provided a translation of the "Tao-Te-Ching" itself, which uses Wang Chen's apparent readings and parsing of the text, and so differs from the many earlier translations, and from the Sawyers' own understanding of the book. Each of the eighty-one chapters consists of a passage of the Lao-Tzu, Wang Chen's explanation of its application, and the translators' explication of its (mainly military and political) context and significance. The two alternative titles of the translation reflect the thrust of Wang Chen's commentary equally well, although the choice seems to reflect the markets served by the two publishers. As is the case with many Shambhala publications, the volume is rather thin on references, although Sawyer's Preface does mention some important translations of the "Tao Te Ching." Since he explains that the book is directed at ordinary readers, he might have expanded some of these brief comments in the Preface -- the ordinary reader may not be familiar with, say, the difference between the Ho Shang Kung and Wang Pi texts of Lao-Tzu, which he mentions in passing. (These are two early commentaries, whose approaches and textual readings mark the religious and philosophical approaches to the book; the received "Wang Pi" *text* of Lao-tzu, by the way, seems not to correspond completely to the one implied in his commentary! For relevant bibliography, see below.) Wang Chen and his "commentary" are the main focus of the book. The Sawyers attempt to show how the general connects his views to a book usually treated from religious and philosophical perspectives.