One of the reasons Buddhists emphasize the idea of non-self so much, I think, is they see the kind of danger that can emerge from self-focused approaches like expressive individualism. That danger is when we identify with our bad qualities in a way that stops us from getting better. Buddhists emphasize the lack of an essential self so that we can shed our bad qualities, become better than we are.

Bronwyn Finnigan takes the importance of self-transformation as a key reason Buddhists advocate non-self. It is the lack of essence or permanence to the self that makes possible the Third Noble Truth:

The third ‘truth’ affirms that suffering can cease. It is possible to change from a state of pervasive suffering to one of happiness or well-being. Why does the Buddha think this is true? Because he thinks that nothing exists permanently, everything depends for its existence on causes and conditions. It follows that if one changes the causes and conditions of some effect, one changes the effect. This provides a guideline for the possibility of self-transformation. Psychological change is possible if one changes the relevant causes and conditions. In order to transform one’s psychological character in some respect, one needs to alter the causes and conditions of that aspect of character.

Amber Carpenter, relatedly, looks to a passage in the Avijjapaccaya Sutta that proclaims, “If there is the view, ‘The soul and the body are the same,’ there is no living of the holy life; and if there is the view, “The soul is one thing, the body is another,’ there is no living of the holy life.” Carpenter describes this as the “Moral Improvement Argument”. It is essential that we get better, and whether we identify a self with its qualities or with something independent of its qualities, either way we cannot improve:

On the one hand, if I am identical to all the various modes, moments and characteristics ordinarily thought to constitute or belong to the self, then I am the bad qualities as well as the good ones, the worse as much as the better. I cannot claim allegiance to only the subset of attractive properties and say that only these are “me”, for “I” am the totality. On the other hand, neither can we instead suppose the self is an entity distinct from these various characteristics, unqualified by them. For then when I become more generous, say, there might be something better now than it was before (there is generosity now where there was meanness before), but this cannot be “me”, because the I which is eternal and independent of conditions cannot change at all. (26)

From this, Carpenter takes the strong conclusion that “Therefore, if we are committed to moral improvement being even possible, we must reject the existence of self.” (26) I do not think we need to go that far. Things change, and people change, and we can speak of both as existent – conventionally. But we need to acknowledge that change as fundamental to whatever sort of existence they have. An existentialist Buddhism, as I think of it, requires that we acknowledge all things, and especially our selves, as empty in the sense of being dependently originated – subject to causes and conditions. This critique of self is one of the most important ways that this approach plays out in practice.

For self-improvement to happen, it is important not just that the self be mutable but that it be divisible. We must be able to make distinctions within the mind – and, perhaps most importantly, within the given mind. We start where we are, and where we are does provide the value context for where we’re going, for the self we discover or co-create. But where we are is also full of harmful tendencies that interfere with those values, tendencies from which it is essential that we dereify and disidentify. And it is on this point where non-self becomes not merely a theoretical but a practical critique of expressive individualism: it recognizes how dangerous it is to cling to “this is me!” The idea of a true fixed self does not allow that self to change and improve: to say I have been angry and self-pitying but now I will not be.

Now expressive individualism contains multitudes, as one of its advocates famously put it: there are many different expressive individualist approaches that do not all agree with each other. And that difference is crucial, because some of those approaches are more Buddhist-friendly than others.

Recent versions of expressive individualism have unfortunately come to emphasize the “true self” as something rigid and unchanging – including even its bad parts. This approach is perhaps especially visible in a prominent view of transgender identity, which treats being trans as something you always were, an immutable aspect of your soul – born this way. Thus there is often an expectation – encouraged, I’m told, by practices of medical “gatekeeping” that judge who is and isn’t eligible for transgender medical procedures – that every transwoman will have a story of playing with mom’s dresses and makeup at age four. That story certainly doesn’t fit my life, and there are plenty of others it doesn’t fit either. Its view of trans identity as eternal and essential doesn’t serve us well.

But there is an alternate version of expressive individualism, one which is made clearest in the subtitle of Nietzsche’s Ecce Homo: “How one becomes what one is.” Here, our individuality remains something of the highest ethical importance; Nietzsche proclaims “Hear me! For I am such and such a person. Above all, do not mistake me for someone else!” Yet that individuality is something narrative, something we co-create with others and with our natural and social environment over the course of our lives. It is this strand of expressive individualism that can agree with Buddhists that the self is divisible, heteronomous, and especially mutable. And that is crucial, because a mutable true self is an improvable true self. An eternal true self will forever be mired in suffering.