What Five Virtues Does the Liu Tao Require of a General?

A fresh translation

Original text

Words and concepts

• Jiang (將), general
  The person entrusted with command. The chapter later calls the general a support of the state and insists that appointment requires scrutiny.
• Cai (材), capacity or virtue
  A usable quality or human capacity. “Virtue” captures the positive contrast with the ten faults, although the term is not identical to a moral virtue in every context.
• Guo (過), fault or excess
  A dangerous tendency. Several later examples turn an apparently admirable trait into a vulnerability when it lacks restraint.
• Courage, wisdom, benevolence, trustworthiness, loyalty
  Five different demands placed side by side. The list does not allow martial boldness to stand for the whole person.
• “May I ask what they are?”
  A conventional dialogue formula that opens the catalogue rather than proving that the exchange records verbatim historical speech.

The chapter begins with selection, not battlefield technique

The opening question is about how to discuss a general. It does not ask how a commander should deploy troops, read terrain, or win a particular engagement. The problem comes earlier: what sort of person should receive command at all?

That starting point matters in a work filled with formations, signals, weapons, and difficult situations. The Dragon Tao places chapters on the structure of command beside chapters on choosing and establishing a general. Before technique can be exercised, someone must be entrusted with the army.

The four lines therefore belong to a test of appointment. King Wu asks for a standard. Tai Gong answers with two linked totals—five virtues and ten faults—before the dialogue requests the individual items. The numbers make the evaluation memorable, but they also impose discipline on it. A single impressive deed cannot settle the judgment.

Five virtues and ten faults belong to one examination

The positive list is only the first half of the chapter's design. Immediately after naming the five virtues, Tai Gong explains what each does. Courage resists violation; wisdom resists confusion; benevolence cares for people; trustworthiness does not deceive; loyalty admits no divided heart.

Then the chapter turns to ten faults. Some are obvious weaknesses, but others are virtues pushed out of balance. Courage can become contempt for death. Benevolence can become an inability to inflict suffering. Trust can become readiness to believe others. Integrity can coexist with failure to care for people.

This pairing prevents a checklist reading. Possessing the name of a virtue is insufficient. The evaluator must ask how that quality behaves under pressure and whether it has become an opening that another person can exploit.

Courage occupies one place, not the whole list

Courage appears first. That position suits the demands of command, yet the syntax gives it no monopoly. It is followed without hesitation by wisdom, benevolence, trustworthiness, and loyalty.

The arrangement is especially sharp because the later list treats reckless courage as a fault. A person may look fearless and still be unsuitable. If courage means rushing toward death, an opponent can provoke it. The trait that first attracts admiration can become a predictable weakness.

The Liu Tao does not solve this problem by rejecting courage. It keeps courage among the five virtues while rejecting its uncontrolled form among the ten faults. Evaluation therefore depends on degree, combination, and judgment. The commander must be hard to violate without becoming easy to bait.

Wisdom is defined by resistance to disorder

The next virtue is wisdom. In the continuation, its effect is described compactly: the wise general cannot be thrown into confusion. This is more specific than the possession of information or clever speech.

Command exposes a person to uncertain reports, deceptive appearances, and changing circumstances. The text measures wisdom by what happens when those pressures arrive. Does the mind keep distinctions clear, or does it lose order?

The later faults again complicate the praise. The chapter names a person who is intelligent but timid, and another who is intelligent but slow at heart. Intelligence can coexist with hesitation. The positive term must therefore be tested in action, not inferred from reputation alone.

Benevolence and trustworthiness answer different risks

Benevolence and trustworthiness may sound like neighboring moral terms, but the chapter assigns them different objects. Benevolence concerns the treatment of people. Trustworthiness concerns deception and the reliability of one's word.

A commander can fail in either direction. Harshness may destroy attachment, while misplaced compassion may prevent a necessary decision. Deceit may make orders and promises unreliable, while excessive readiness to believe can invite manipulation. The chapter refuses to turn either virtue into unlimited softness.

Putting the two together also broadens the meaning of military competence. The general is judged through relationships: care toward others and credibility in dealing with them. Neither quality can be reduced to physical bravery or tactical knowledge.

Loyalty closes the five-part list

The fifth virtue is loyalty. The continuation glosses it as having no divided heart. In the chapter's political frame, the general receives forces that belong to the ruler and acts at a distance where immediate supervision may be impossible.

Capability without loyalty would create its own danger. A courageous, intelligent, benevolent, and trustworthy commander could still turn those strengths away from the authority that appointed him. The final term binds the preceding capacities to the relation of service.

That does not make the list a full theory of obedience or justify every command. The four lines merely state the criterion. They do, however, explain why loyalty is not treated as a decorative addition after technical skill. It closes a problem opened by delegation.

Why the excerpt stops before the ten faults

The selected passage ends when the five virtues are named. The ten faults are essential to the chapter, but quoting the entire catalogue would turn a close reading into a large extract. The immediate context can be described without reproducing it in full.

Stopping here also preserves the force of the opening sequence. The reader first hears that evaluation has two sides. Only then does the positive list appear. The chapter will challenge those terms, but it begins by giving them a clear shape.

This boundary matters for interpretation. The article can explain that the continuation tests admirable qualities for dangerous excess. It cannot pretend that four lines contain every distinction developed later in the chapter.

What the four lines do not establish

They do not prove that a historical King Wu and a historical Tai Gong spoke these exact words. The Liu Tao is traditionally associated with Tai Gong, but its received form should not be treated as a transcript of an early court conversation.

They do not define the five virtues completely. The next sentences supply brief effects, and the ten faults complicate them further. Isolating the nouns from that continuation would make the list flatter than the chapter itself.

They do not rank courage above all other qualities merely because it comes first. Nor do they say that every general must display all five in equal measure in every circumstance.

Finally, they do not provide a mechanical hiring test. No scores, procedures, witnesses, or examples of successful appointments appear in these four lines. The passage names fields of judgment, not an administrative form.

The surrounding sequence makes that scrutiny institutional rather than merely personal. The ruler asks; the adviser names a standard; the prospective general is measured before troops are committed. Later chapters may address what a commander does, but “Discussing Generals” first makes appointment itself a consequential act. An army can inherit the strengths of the person chosen to lead it, and it can also inherit that person's unexamined excesses.

A compact entrance to a demanding catalogue

The opening of “Discussing Generals” is memorable because it is short, but its brevity is not simplicity. Five virtues stand opposite ten faults. The imbalance itself warns that disqualification may take more forms than excellence.

Courage, wisdom, benevolence, trustworthiness, and loyalty span action, judgment, care, credibility, and allegiance. None can safely replace the others. The continuation then asks whether each quality remains sound when pressed toward excess.

The passage therefore begins selection with a double question. What strength does this person possess? What danger might grow from the same disposition? The Liu Tao does not wait for battle to discover the answer. It makes scrutiny part of command before command is given.

Source

Liu Tao (六韜), Dragon Tao, chapter 19, “Discussing Generals” (論將), opening. The wording follows the received text represented by the Sibu Congkan First Series edition. A Japanese woodblock text appears in book seven of Hyōdai Bukei Shichisho Zenbun, books 1–7, corrected by Wang Huan (Osaka: Bunkindō, late Edo period). Waseda University Library, call number 文庫31 E1920.