The Art of War examinations. During the Sengoku period (c. 1467–1568), the Japanese "daimyō" named Takeda Shingen (1521–1573) is said to have become almost invincible in all battles without relying on guns, because he studied "The Art of War". The book even gave him the inspiration for his famous battle standard "Fūrinkazan" (Wind, Forest, Fire and Mountain), meaning fast as the wind, silent as a forest, ferocious as fire and immovable as a mountain. The translator Samuel B. Griffith offers a chapter on "Sun Tzu and Mao Tse-Tung" where "The Art of War" is cited as influencing Mao's "On Guerrilla Warfare", "On the Protracted
Book of the 24 Philosophers Book of the 24 Philosophers The Book of the 24 Philosophers (in Latin "Liber XXIV philosophorum") is a philosophical and theological medieval text of uncertain authorship. The book consists of twenty-four “sentences”, “aphorisms” or “definitions” of “God”, attributed to as many philosophers attending a fictional gathering, each an attempt to answer their only remaining question, “what is God?” ("quid Deus?"). The first textual witness is from a 12th-century French manuscript currently at Laon. The definitions were often accompanied by a scholastic commentary in either of two redactions, the “shorter” and the “longer” commentary. Both definitions and commentary echo and weave