Sun Tzu · Politics

All Warfare Is Deception

Sun Tzu’s most famous and unsettling principle: that war is fundamentally the art of <em>deception</em> - of misleading the enemy about your strength, your position, and your intentions until he is defeated by his own false picture of reality.

What you'll be able to recall

You learned that for Sun Tzu, deception is the essence of war. Explain in your own words how making the enemy misperceive reality is itself a form of attack.

Leads to Niccolò Machiavelli.

Begin this lesson →
← All lessons on Sun Tzu

epoché — a humanities education that remembers you.