 Nishitani had earlier used the expression, “the self that is not a self,” to characterize the shared endeavor of Nishida and Tanabe to think “a ‘self that is not a self’ turning on the axis of absolute nothingness” (NKC IX, 238; Nishitani 1991, 175). The idea of the true self as a “self that is not a self” expresses an essential aspect of what Nishida and other Kyoto School thinkers call—following D. T. Suzuki, who in turn gleaned the idea from the Diamond Sutra—the “logic of soku-hi,” a logic of “is and is not” or affirmation by way of negation (see Akizuki 1996, 109–152; NKZ XI, 398–99; Nishida 1987, 70). The self finds its most originary freedom, and its most open engagement with others, through a radical self-negation which returns it, not to a higher Will or encompassing Being, but to an essentially self-negating absolute nothingness that, in turn, finds expression only in the interaction of truly self-determining individuals. For Nishida, the true individual is an interpersonal self-determining focal point of the self-determination of absolute nothingness, in other words, an interactive and creative element of a creative world (see NKZ VIII, 343ff.).