Illusion Or Delusion? A Re-Examination of Buddhist Philosophy of Personal Identity

In this article, I argue against the conventional view that Buddhist philosophy of personal identity regards the self as an illusion. Critically engaging the work of Miri Albahari, I defend the view that it is instead centered around the properly diagnostic claim that the overwhelming majority of human beings suffer from a delusion concerning the nature of the self. In the central section of the paper, I draw from contemporary work in philosophy of psychiatry to gain clarity on what delusions are and how they are distinct from illusions. On the narrative theory of delusions I thence develop, delusions are best understood as faulty and harm-inducing self-referential narrative constructions. Buddhist views on human beings’ confusion concerning the self, I then submit, consist of the diagnosis of a delusion in precisely this sense. At the end of the article, I argue that in addition to its intrinsic merits this interpretation has the added advantage of bringing into sharper focus the irreducibly therapeutic character of Buddhist philosophy of personal identity, and I discuss the implications of this for future cross-cultural research on the problem of selfhood.