Comparing Focus: Knowledge

The Art of War 3:3.6

This article explains the stanza at the end of the third section of chapter three of The Art of War. This stanza explains in detail one of the most famous lines in Sun Tzu:

“Know yourself and know your enemy.
The Art of War 3:3.6.2

The topic of the chapter is focus. The topic of this stanza is knowledge. In the previous article, the knowledge was of the big picture of a strategic situation. In this case, the focus is narrower: knowing our own positions and the positions of our direct competitors. Sun Tzu uses this stanza as a method of reviewing the various types of focus discussed in this chapter.

While this line has a broad application, Sun Tzu is making several specific points about what we do and do not know.