They Shall Beat Their Swords Into Plowshares : Military Strategy, Psychoanalysis and the Art of Living Paperback / softback

As Freud has suggested, the "good life," which is characterized by deep and wide love and creative and productive work, that is also guided by reason and ethics and is aesthetically pleasing, has been the quest of philosophers, psychologists, and all "deep thinkers" from time immemorial.

The central premise of this book is that there is an intimate, dynamic, and animating analogy between the art and science of war, as practiced by the great classical military strategists and generals, and the art and science of living the "good life." Indeed, the masterful strategic, operational, and tactical formulations developed by the two greatest philosophers of war, the Chinese sage and military thinker, Sun Tzu, author of the timeless work The Art of War, and the Prussian military officer Carl von Clausewitz, author of the magisterial On War, each maintain a direct relevance and application to the art of living the "good life." By mining some of the key insights from Sun Tzu and Clausewitz, and drawing from the writings of the great strategists and generals from history including Thucydides, Machiavelli and Napoleon, this book will illuminate some of the underappreciated practical wisdom that is immensely pertinent to the average person's everyday personal struggle to live the "good life." It also incorporates useful insights from more recent "master" military strategists like Alfred Thayer Mahan, Julian Corbett and Mao TseTung, and contemporary soldierscholars who have written on the nature of war, counterinsurgency, and terrorism, including John Nagl, David Kilcullen, and Rupert Smith.

Military strategic theory, especially when combined with a psychoanalytic sensibility, has much to offer by way of guidance to leading the "good life," such as becoming a better partner in a love relationship, being more efficient and effective at work, prevailing in the face of adversity, making good decisions when confronted with tough choices, as well as offering insights for those working with challenging psychotherapy patients.

As General Omar N. Bradley aptly noted during the Second World War, "This is as true in everyday life as it is in battle: we are given one life and the decision is ours, whether to wait for circumstances to make up our mind, or whether to act, and in acting, to live."