In our contemporary intellectual landscape, both postmodern philosophy and Buddhist thought have gained renewed attention for their penetrating analysis of human experience. While often seen as destabilizing or even corrosive to metaphysical certainty, they nonetheless contain a genuine insight—one that must be acknowledged before it can be properly integrated.
The Insight of Transience
When phenomena are examined strictly on the basis of experience, they appear fundamentally unstable. They arise, change, and pass away. This observation lies at the heart of Buddhist thought, particularly in the doctrine of impermanence (anicca), and finds resonance in postmodern critiques of stable identity and fixed meaning.
As expressed in the Dhammapada:
“All conditioned things are impermanent—when one sees this with wisdom, one turns away from suffering.” (Dhammapada 277)
Likewise, postmodern thinkers such as Jacques Derrida argue that meaning is always deferred, never fully present, always entangled in a web of differences. Reality, as experienced, resists final grounding.
There is a profound truth here. If we restrict ourselves to phenomena as they appear, we find no fixed essence. Experience, taken on its own terms, dissolves into flux.
A young man once said to me, “I like to get to the bottom of things.” Yet, by reason alone—especially when confined to empirical or phenomenological investigation—there is no “bottom.” There is only further relation, further differentiation, further unfolding.
The Limits of Phenomenology
This insight, however, reveals not the absence of essence, but the limitation of a purely phenomenological method.
Even within Western philosophy, this limitation is acknowledged. Edmund Husserl sought to “return to the things themselves,” yet his project ultimately uncovered not stable substances, but intentional acts—consciousness always directed toward something, never grasping a thing-in-itself in isolation.
Similarly, Martin Heidegger shifted the question from beings to Being itself, precisely because beings, as encountered, never disclose their full ground.
Thus, the instability discovered by both Buddhism and postmodernism is not an illusion in the sense of being false—it is an incomplete perspective. It is what reality looks like when viewed from within the horizon of experience alone.
Dependent Arising and the Web of Relations
Buddhism articulates this relational structure through the doctrine of dependent origination (pratītyasamutpāda): all things arise in dependence upon causes and conditions.
“When this is, that is. From the arising of this comes the arising of that.” (Samyutta Nikāya 12.61)
From a phenomenological standpoint, this is undeniably accurate. The self, as experienced, is not a fixed substance but a dynamic aggregation—what Buddhism calls the five skandhas.
Modern psychology, too, confirms this: the “self” we experience is constructed, fluid, shaped by memory, environment, and social interaction.
In this sense, the self as experienced is indeed transient and relational.
The Recovery of Metaphysics
And yet—this is not the whole story.
To stop here is to confuse epistemology (how we know) with ontology (what is). The fact that essence cannot be grasped through phenomenological analysis does not mean that essence does not exist.
Here, the Catholic metaphysical tradition provides a necessary corrective.
Thomas Aquinas writes:
“The soul is subsistent, for it has an operation of its own in which the body does not share.” (Summa Theologiae, I, q. 75, a. 2)
The human soul is not reducible to the flux of experience. It is immaterial, subsistent, and the principle of unity underlying the multiplicity of our experiences.
Likewise, Augustine of Hippo testifies to an interior depth that transcends change:
“You were within me, but I was outside myself.” (Confessions, X.27)
The self we encounter phenomenologically may be fragmented and relational, but this very experience points beyond itself to a deeper ground.
Participation in Eternity
This deeper ground is not merely static—it is participatory.
The soul does not exist in isolation; it participates in the eternal being of God. As Aquinas teaches:
“Every creature is a participation in the divine being.” (Summa Theologiae, I, q. 44, a. 1)
Thus, while our experience unfolds in time, our being is rooted in eternity.
This allows us to affirm both insights simultaneously:
- From the standpoint of experience: the self is transient, relational, and dependent.
- From the standpoint of metaphysics: the soul is stable, subsistent, and grounded in God.
A Synthesis: Phenomenological Flux and Metaphysical Identity
We can now articulate a synthesis.
The phenomenological self—the self as experienced—is indeed:
- transient
- relational
- constructed within a web of causes
In this sense, Buddhism’s analysis of dependent arising is profoundly illuminating.
But the metaphysical self—the self in its ontological ground—is:
- immaterial
- subsistent
- rooted in the soul
This dimension lies beyond the scope of phenomenological investigation.
To deny the first is naïve. To deny the second is reductionistic.
The truth requires both.
Conclusion: Beyond Illusion to Reality
It is tempting, when confronted with the instability of experience, to conclude that all is illusion. But this is a premature conclusion.
What we discover in the flux of phenomena is not the absence of reality, but the inadequacy of a method that confines itself to appearances.
The deeper task is not to reject phenomenology, nor to absolutize it, but to situate it within a broader metaphysical horizon.
Only then can we say:
- Yes, the self as experienced is fleeting.
- But the self as grounded in the soul endures.
And in that endurance, the human person participates not merely in time, but in eternity itself.