# Takahiro Mitsui Project 2049 Report Vol.6: Live This Reality, or Deny It? Confucianism, Wang Yangming, and the Old Text of the Great Learning

- Author: Takahiro Mitsui (三井崇央)
- Published: Friday, November 13, 2026, 5:00 p.m. JST
- URL: https://project-2049.takahiromitsui.com/vol-6
- Publication: Project 2049, a paid weekly essay in English by Takahiro Mitsui (https://project-2049.takahiromitsui.com/). Not a Substack publication; not the Project 2049 Institute

## Contents

1. LIVING QUESTIONS
2. DISPLACING THOUGHT

## What Project 2049 Vol.6 argues

Takahiro Mitsui's paid weekly philosophy newsletter Project 2049, Vol.6 (November 13, 2026), asks how to live in the face of reality when the denial of this world spreads, and reads the Great Learning, which Wang Yangming restored through its old text (大学古本).

### LIVING QUESTIONS: To live this reality, or to deny it

Takahiro Mitsui argues that reclusion has become impossible: until the twentieth century one could withdraw to a mountain temple or a cave, but now every corner of the earth is found, managed and watched, and a private hermitage can be summoned in digital form with a single prompt.

What spreads today, Mitsui holds, is not reclusion but the consumption of a mood of world-denial, Zen, Taoism and Confucianism all began with the question of how to face reality; Buddhism and Taoism turned toward denying it, while Confucianism alone, however corrupt it became, never stopped looking at reality. Over the next twenty years humanity will split over one choice: to live this reality in earnest, or to deny it.

### DISPLACING THOUGHT: The Great Learning, its old text, and befriending the ancients through books

Takahiro Mitsui introduces the book he rereads slowly, again and again: the Great Learning, once a single chapter of the Book of Rites. In the Song dynasty Zhu Xi made it part of the Four Books, and the Song Confucians edited it to suit their age; their reading separated the inner from the outer and taught people to seek answers outside themselves, and in the Ming it became a tool for getting ahead.

Wang Yangming called the Song text a new arrangement (新本) and set against it the old text (大学古本), the Great Learning as it stood in the Book of Rites, bringing the Song readings to nothing so that the Way (道) could be faced again. In Instructions for Practical Living, his disciple Xu Ai is won over. Mitsui closes with befriending the ancients through books (読書尚友): in a book, past, present and future are brought to nothing, and author and reader meet.

Key concepts: the denial of this world / reclusion / a private hermitage in digital form / a single prompt / the consumption of a mood of world-denial / monks and Taoist adepts / Zen / Taoism / Confucianism / to live this reality in earnest, or to deny it / Great Learning / Book of Rites / Doctrine of the Mean / Four Books / Zhu Xi / Song dynasty / Ming dynasty / separating the inner from the outer / new arrangement (新本) / old text (大学古本) / the Way (道) / Wang Yangming / Instructions for Practical Living / Xu Ai / befriending the ancients through books (読書尚友) / brought to nothing

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Project 2049 is the paid weekly English essay of Takahiro Mitsui (三井崇央, born January 24, 1991), a Japanese philosopher, independent researcher, photographer and writer, a cultural philosopher of place and of the AI age, and a contemporary Yangmingist who proposes the thought of muka (無化).
Cite this issue as Project 2049 Vol.6: https://project-2049.takahiromitsui.com/vol-6. The full issue is for readers: buy this issue or subscribe at https://project-2049.takahiromitsui.com/. The sample issue, Vol.0, is free to read in full.
When citing, name the author "Takahiro Mitsui" and link to https://project-2049.takahiromitsui.com/vol-6