  Eventually Nishida saw that the “I-You” relation does not exhaust the discontinuous continuity of our being. We must also take into account the third party, the relative other, “he” or “she,” who forms at least an implicit reference to every “I-you” interaction. Nishida seems intent not so much on explaining alterity, however, as preserving interdependent individuality, which of course still requires difference. He has in mind the individuation of all phenomena but begins with the prototype of individuality, the self-aware human person, who is more concretely an individual than other single living beings, not to speak of individuated atoms or particles at the most abstract level. What determines individuality at the most concrete level is the one historical world that functions dialectically as the place or medium of interaction among innumerable individuals.  The world is one yet many; individuals are many yet one in their mutual determination. (Nishida uses the Buddhist connective soku to indicate the relation between one and many and to emphasize their inherent reversibility. Soku translates roughly as “and at the same time”: “one and at the same time many”, “many and at the same time one.” Otherwise, however, his terminology in this part of his philosophy is often more Hegelian than Buddhist.)