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We ought to admit, up front, that one of our strongest unspoken motivations for upholding something close to the traditional concept of self is our desire to see the world’s villains “get what they deserve.” This explains the abundance of constructivist views of the self – narrative selves – in contemporary philosophy and cognitive sciences. True, we do not want to live in a world without morality. But why assume that a world bereft of selves is bereft of morality and moral responsibility? It is because of the equation of moral responsibility with our ordinary moral practices of retributive blame and punishment, just deserts, emotions of anger and resentment, guilts and shame, and so on. Motivated by the Buddhist vision of a selfless universe aimed at eliminating, or at least reducing, suffering, I want to argue that the fear of moral nihilism that motivates the constructivist project is misplaced. Furthermore, following the Buddhist, I argue that the posit of narrative self is likely to produce more harm than good. Thus, there is good reason to abandon the constructivist project.
