Lost for some 2,000 years and only rediscovered by chance in 1972, Sun Pin: The Art of Warfare is now recognized as one of the essential texts of classical Chinese military philosophy. In this new edition, D. C. Lau and Roger T. Ames, eminent scholars of Chinese philosophy and widely respected translators, offer a comprehensive translation of the Sun Pin texts, along with extensive notes and commentary. The publication of this volume returns the work of one of the great military innovators to the canon of Chinese literature. Sun Pin, believed to be a direct descendant of the distinguished military theorist Sun-tzu, flourished during the mid-fourth century B.C. during China's Warring States era, a period of unprecedented violence. As independent nation states attempted to annihilate each other through incessant and escalating battles, military tactics increased exponentially in sophistication and brutality. In the China of the mid-fourth century B.C., it was not uncommon for as many as 80,000 soldiers to perish in a single defeat. As Lau and Ames write in their introduction, warfare was increasingly a way of life, and a way of death. This was the world that Sun Pin both reflected and deeply influenced through his writings. Sun Pin, himself a victim of a court intrigue that resulted in the amputation of his legs below the knee, rose above disgrace to become the key adviser of King Wei, the ruler of the state of Ch'i. In his writings, Sun Pin draws on battles he had waged as well as examples from earlier history to explore the nature, the purpose, and the effective conduct of war. Sun Pin, essentially a philosopher of the battlefield, ponders such key concepts as the exemplary ruler, the importance of strategy and morale, and the advantages to be gained from adaptability, display, and discretion. Yet these texts are also clearly intended to be practical and to be used to maximum effect on the battlefield. As Sun Pin writes, for one who has really mastered the way of warfare, his enemy can do nothing to escape death. This new edition of Sun Pin: The Art of Warfare includes not only the sixteen chapters and fragments of the main text recovered at Yin-ch'üeh-shan in 1972, but also fifteen supplementary chapters and three extracts from the encyclopedic tradition. The translation by professors D.C. Lau and Roger T. Ames is admirably clear and fluid, and their comprehensive introduction examining the life and times and the original philosophical contribution of the Sun Pin literature is a brilliant work in its own right. Sun Pin: The Art of Warfare is a timeless text that fuses history, philosophy, military technique, and reflections on the nature of human conflict. At once evocative of an ancient culture and deeply relevant to contemporary concepts of power and leadership, this volume belongs in the libraries of all serious readers.

Sun Pin: The Art of Warfare (Classics of Ancient China)

Science & Math

D.C. Lau

Roger T. Ames

Sun, Pin

Technology

Ballantine Books

Composed more than 2,000 years ago during a turbulent period of Chinese history, the Dao de jing set forth an alternative vision of reality in a world torn apart by violence and betrayal. Daoism, as this subtle but enduring philosophy came to be known, offers a comprehensive view of experience grounded in a full understanding of the wonders hidden in the ordinary. Now in this luminous new translation, based on the recently discovered ancient bamboo scrolls, China scholars Roger T. Ames and David L. Hall bring the timeless wisdom of the Dao de jing into our contemporary world. Though attributed to Laozi, “the Old Master,” the Dao de jing is, in fact, of unknown authorship and may well have originated in an oral tradition four hundred years before the time of Christ. Eschewing philosophical dogma, the Dao de jing set forth a series of maxims that outlined a new perspective on reality and invited readers to embark on a regimen of self-cultivation. In the Daoist world view, each particular element in our experience sends out an endless series of ripples throughout the cosmos. The unstated goal of the Dao de jing is self-transformation–the attainment of personal excellence that flows from the world and back into it. Responding to the teachings of Confucius, the Dao de jing revitalizes moral behavior by recommending a spontaneity made possible by the cultivated “habits” of the individual. In this elegant volume, Ames and Hall feature the original Chinese texts of the Dao de jing and translate them into crisp, chiseled English that reads like poetry. Each of the eighty-one brief chapters is followed by clear, thought-provoking commentary exploring the layers of meaning in the text. The book’s extensive introduction is a model of accessible scholarship in which Ames and Hall consider the origin of the text, place the emergence of Daoist philosophy in its historical and political context, and outline its central tenets. The Dao de jing is a work of timeless wisdom and beauty, as vital today as it was in ancient China. This new version will stand as both a compelling introduction to the complexities of Daoist thought and as the classic modern English translation.

Dao De Jing: A Philosophical Translation

Politics & Social Sciences

David L. Hall

Laozi

Philosophy

Sun Bin: The Art of Warfare: A Translation of the Classic Chinese Work of Philosophy and Strategy (SUNY Series in Chinese Philosophy and Culture)

A classic of both military strategy and Eastern philosophy from the fourth century B.C.E. Sun Bin’s Art of Warfare is an essential text of Chinese military philosophy and of strategy in general. This book, lost for over two thousand years and rediscovered only in 1972, has not yet reached the prominence of Sunzi’s (Sun-tzu) The Art of Warfare, which is the best-known military treatise in the world. Sun Bin’s work is an indispensable companion to the work of Sunzi, who is believed to be his ancestor, but deserves to be better known in its own right, both philosophically and historically. Here, noted sinologists D. C. Lau and Roger T. Ames offer an admirably lucid translation, and provide an introduction examining the life, times, and original philosophical contributions of Sun Bin. Sun Bin, advisor to King Wei of the state of Qi, worked and wrote during the mid-fourth century B.C.E. during China’s Warring States period. It was a time of unprecedented violence; without a central national authority, nation-states fought fiercely amongst one another. New technologies made fighting more deadly, so that between the mid-fourth and mid-third centuries B.C.E., the number of battlefield casualties increased tenfold. Sun Bin’s work is the key to understanding the physical and intellectual revolution that made such “progress” in the efficiency of warfare possible. The Art of Warfare shows Sun Bin as both practical tactician and philosopher. He discusses war and rulership not only as philosophical concepts, but also as practical matters, evidenced by his battle-tested techniques. This is a fascinating book both for its reflection on its own time and for its reflection on power, conflict, and leadership for all times.

Sun Bin: The Art of Warfare : A Translation of the Classic Chinese Work of Philosophy and Strategy (Suny Series in Chinese Philosophy and Culture)

History

Sun Bin (Sun Pin)

Asia

State Univ of New York Pr

The Zhongyong--translated here as Focusing the Familiar--has been regarded as a document of enormous wisdom for more than two millennia and is one of Confucianism's most sacred and seminal texts. It achieved truly canonical preeminence when it became one of the Four Books compiled and annotated by the Southern Song dynasty philosopher Zhu Xi (1130-1200). Within the compass of world literature, the influence of these books (Analects of Confucius, Great Learning, Zhongyong, and Mencius) on the Sinitic world of East Asia has been no less than the Bible and the Qu'ran on Western civilization. With this new translation David Hall and Roger Ames provide a distinctly philosophical interpretation of the Zhongyong, remaining attentive to the semantic and conceptual nuances of the text to account for its central place within classical Chinese literature. They present the text in such a way as to provide Western philosophers and other intellectuals access to a set of interpretations and arguments that offer new insights into issues and concerns common to both Chinese and Western thinkers. In addition to the annotated translation, a glossary of terms gives in concise form important senses of the terms that play a key role in the argument of the Zhongyong. An appendix addresses some of the more technical issues relevant to the understanding of both the history of the text and the history of its English translations. Here the translators introduce readers to the best contemporary textual studies of the Zhongyong and make use of the most recent archaeological discoveries in China to place the work within its own intellectual context.

Focusing the Familiar

Reference

Words, Language & Grammar

University of Hawaii Press

Recent history makes clear that the quantum leaps being made in technology are the leading edge of a groundswell of paradigm shifts taking place in science, politics, economics, social institutions, and the expression of cultural values. Indeed it is the simultaneity and interdependence of these changes occurring in every dimension of human experience and endeavor that makes the present so historically distinctive. The essays gathered here give voice to perspectives on the always improvised relationship between technology and cultural values from Africa, the Americas, Asia, Australia, Europe, and the Pacific. Contributors: Syed Muhammad Naquib Al-Attas, Roger T. Ames,Yoko Arisaka, Carl Becker, Francesca Bray, James Buchanan, Arindam Chakrabarti, Frank W. Derringh, Rolf Elberfeld, Charles Ess, Andrew Feenberg, Susantha Goonatilake, H. Jiuan Heng, Peter Hershock, Thomas P. Kasulis, George Khushf, David Farrell Krell, Joel J. Kupperman, William R. LaFleur, Lois Ann Lorentzen, David Loy, Joseph Margolis, Hans-Georg Möller, Robert Cummings Neville, Peimin Ni, Monica Atieno Opole, Kuruvilla Pandikattu SJ, Helen Petrovsky, Ramon Sentmartí, Kristin Shrader-Frechette, Vasanthi Srinivasan, Marietta Stepaniants, Vyacheslav S. Stiopin, Henk ten Have, Paul B.Thompson, Mary Tiles, David B.Wong.

Technology and Cultural Values: On the Edge of the Third Millennium

Peter D. Hershock

Marietta Stepaniants

Social Sciences

The Chinese Classic of Family Reverence: A Philosophical Translation of the Xiaojing

Few if any philosophical schools have championed family values as persistently as the early Confucians, and a great deal can be learned by attending to what they had to say on the subject. In the Confucian tradition, human morality and the personal realization it inspires are grounded in the cultivation of family feeling. One may even go so far as to say that, for China, family reverence was a necessary condition for developing any of the other human qualities of excellence. On the basis of the present translation of the Xiaojing (Classic of Family Reverence) and supplemental passages found in other early philosophical writings, Professors Rosemont and Ames articulate a specifically Confucian conception of "role ethics" that, in its emphasis on a relational conception of the person, is markedly different from most early and contemporary dominant Western moral theories. This Confucian role ethics takes as its inspiration the perceived necessity of family feeling as the entry point in the development of moral competence and as a guide to the religious life as well. In the lengthy introduction, two senior scholars offer their perspective on the historical, philosophical, and religious dimensions of the Xiaojing. Together with this introduction, a lexicon of key terms presents a context for the Xiaojing and provides guidelines for interpreting the text historically in China as well as suggesting its contemporary significance for all societies. The inclusion of the Chinese text adds yet another dimension to this important study. The Chinese Classic of Family Reverence is sure to appeal to specialists of comparative and Chinese philosophy and to all readers interested in the enduring importance of the family.

Henry Rosemont Jr.

Parenting & Relationships

The Analects of Confucious: A Philosophical Translation (Chinese and English Edition)

Henry Rosemont

China Translation and Publishing House

First published: Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, Chinese University of Hong Kong, c2010.

Confucian Role Ethics: A Vocabulary

The Chinese University Press

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