 Hence the Kyoto School, like many other vibrant schools of thought, should be seen as a cluster of original thinkers who, while not uncritically subscribing to any prescribed dogma, nevertheless came to share, and debate, a number of common motifs as well as basic concepts and terminology. As we shall see, the most fundamental of their shared and disputed concepts is that of “absolute nothingness,” a concept that has, in fact, most often been used as a thematic axis for defining the School.