Bare Consciousness as Introspective Limit-Concepts: A Cross-Cultural Analysis in Minimal Duality

This paper develops a comparative philosophical analysis of minimal-duality and “bare” consciousness as introspective limit-concepts—notions that emerge when reflexive awareness approaches the edges of self-representation and differentiation. By examining selected traditions (Neoplatonism, Advaita Vedānta, Mahāyāna Buddhism, Taoism, and Kabbalah) as illustrative case studies rather than an exhaustive canon, we argue that these traditions display striking structural convergences even as they diverge in doctrinal content. When reflective inquiry exhausts the subject–object structure of experience, many cultures articulate a concept of bare existence, bare presence, or bare awareness at the threshold of the sayable. Our comparative framework remains open-ended: it is designed to incorporate additional traditions (e.g. Sufism, apophatic Christian theology, Dzogchen, Kashmir Śaivism, and various indigenous cosmologies), without collapsing their differences into a single homogenized narrative. In making this analysis, we employ phenomenological, metaphysical, and psychological approaches, carefully distinguishing convergent structural insights from divergent metaphysical commitments. For Neoplatonism, we replace terms like “soul” with the Greek psyche and “mystical” with “ecstatic” in the Plotinian sense (ek-stasis, a standing outside ordinary cognition), to maintain precision and avoid unwarranted religious or absolutist connotations. Emphasizing bare existence, bare presence, and bare awareness as present-constrained variants of minimal-dual consciousness, we propose that introspective limits give rise to families of ultimate concepts across cultures. The conclusion reflects on the philosophical implications of these limit-concepts for contemporary debates on mind and reality, advocating a pluralistic approach that honors both the shared boundary-experience and the irreducible particularity of each tradition’s insights. Footnotes provide primary textual evidence (from Plotinus’ Enneads, Upanishads, Buddhist sūtras, Taoist and Kabbalistic writings, etc.) and engage relevant scholarship. In sum, this study offers an open cartography of the “unsayable,” mapping how different traditions navigate the paradoxical presence of an inexpressible, minimal-dual awareness at the limits of thought.[1]