While the Cartesian tradition anchors the certainty of personal identity in the immediacy of conscious thought, Buddhist philosophy offers a radically different perspective. Rejecting the very notion of a stable, enduring self – a rejection motivated not merely by theoretical concerns but by a fundamentally moral and soteriological intention – it posits that what we ordinarily take to be a unified subject is, in fact, a metaphysical construction: an illusion with profound moral and existential consequences. There is no need to assume a stable core as the source of thoughts and experiences; rather, consciousness is conceived as a dynamic stream of causally interdependent psychophysical events, devoid of intrinsic unity or enduring substance (anattā), yet nonetheless possessing operative efficacy. Although prima facie counterintuitive, this decentered account of the self finds significant resonances across several Western philosophical traditions. Hume’s bundle theory (1740) describes the mind as nothing more than a succession of fleeting perceptions, lacking any underlying substratum. Parfit’s reductionism (1971; 1984) similarly denies the existence of a deep, persisting entity underpinning psychological continuity. More recently, Metzinger’s Self-Model Theory (2003; 2009) argues that the self is a transparent, dynamic construction generated by the brain, devoid of any substantial ontological status. What emerges from these diverse traditions is not merely a critique of the notion of a substantial self, but a profound reconceptualization of subjectivity itself. Conscious experience entails reflexive awareness, yet it does not presuppose a fixed subject beneath it; rather, self-awareness appears as a contingent, conceptually mediated phenomenon rather than a metaphysical foundation. Nonetheless, the dissolution of the self-illusion raises significant moral implications: if personal identity is a cognitive fiction, then traditional notions of moral responsibility, autonomy, and free will must be fundamentally reconsidered. Tracing this convergence between Eastern and Western critiques of the self opens a path toward a new understanding of consciousness and agency: one no longer grounded in the fiction of a substantial subject, but in the dynamic processes through which human experience continuously unfolds.

 

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