{"agent_id":"sun-tzu","agent_name":"Sun Tzu","slug":"war-as-calculation-not-righteousness","label":"War as calculation, not righteousness: is there any place for justice in war, or only for advantage?","topic":"War as calculation, not righteousness","question":"Is there any place for justice in war, or only for advantage?","position":"War is decided by calculation, not by the justice of the cause. No ruler should put troops into the field to gratify his own spleen, and no general should fight from resentment; anger turns to gladness and wrath to contentment, but a state once ruined cannot be restored, nor the dead brought back to life. The question before battle is not whether the cause is righteous but whether the reckoning is favourable.","paragraphs":[[{"t":"War is decided by calculation, not by the justice of the cause.","n":[]},{"t":"No ruler should put troops into the field to gratify his own spleen, and no general should fight from resentment; anger turns to gladness and wrath to contentment, but a state once ruined cannot be restored, nor the dead brought back to life.","n":[1,2,3]},{"t":"The question before battle is not whether the cause is righteous but whether the reckoning is favourable.","n":[4]}]],"texts":"The Art of War, ch. I on the five factors and the pre-war reckoning; the warnings against fighting in anger and against the ruler who moves his army from wrath. Reception: the Confucian and Mencian moralization of war (the just campaign, the punitive expedition); the Western just-war tradition; the charge that Sun Tzu is amoral realism.","works":["The Art of War, ch. I on the five factors and the pre-war reckoning","the warnings against fighting in anger and against the ruler who moves his army from wrath"],"reception":"the Confucian and Mencian moralization of war (the just campaign, the punitive expedition); the Western just-war tradition; the charge that Sun Tzu is amoral realism.","status":"Read as the founding text of strategic realism; contested by every tradition that makes the justice of the cause the first question of war.","era":"c. 544 - c. 496 BCE","discipline":"Philosophy","refs":[{"n":1,"work":"The Art of War","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"No ruler should put troops into the field merely to gratify his own spleen; no general should fight a battle simply out of pique.","label":"The Art of War"},{"n":2,"work":"The Art of War","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"But a kingdom that has once been destroyed can never come again into being; nor can the dead ever be brought back to life.","label":"The Art of War"},{"n":3,"work":"The Art of War","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"Anger may in time change to gladness; vexation may be succeeded by content.","label":"The Art of War"},{"n":4,"work":"The Art of War","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"When the higher officers are angry and insubordinate, and on meeting the enemy give battle on their own account from a feeling of resentment, before the commander-in-chief can tell whether or no he is in a position to fight, the result is *ruin*.","label":"The Art of War"}],"answer":null,"siblings":[{"slug":"deception-as-the-way-of-war","label":"Deception as the way of war: is a strategy founded on deceit dishonourable, or is it the humane craft that spares blood?"},{"slug":"winning-without-fighting","label":"Winning without fighting: is 'subduing the enemy whole' an ethic of restraint or of total instrumental control?"},{"slug":"the-general-and-the-sovereign","label":"The general and the sovereign: must expertise be free of the ruler's interference, and who then commands?"}]}