  The topos of absolute nothingness is the ultimate “within which” all reality takes place.  It can be understood as an alternative to a transcendent determiner of the world as conceptualized, for example, in medieval philosophy’s notion of God, Fichte’s transcendental ego, or Husserl’s transcendental subjectivity. Nishida did use the language of transcendence to explain absolute nothingness, saying it transcended the opposition between being and non-being, for example; but such language did not indicate any thing, power, or consciousness beyond the world. Absolute nothingness is infinitely determinable and its determinates form the actual world, but this “self-determination” occurs “without anything that does the determining,” like an agency without an agent. Equally paradoxical are the positive descriptions Nishida gives it, in spite of the implicit claim that it defies description. Rather than a mere absence of being, meaning, or function, absolute nothingness is active and creative in forming the actual world; and it manifests or awakens to itself through self-awareness. It is the foundation of the world and of the self which is a focal point of the world; but it is an uncommon kind of foundation in that it functions through self-negation. It cannot be called “absolute” unless it negates any particular determination of it and simultaneously enfolds them all. It is the universal of universals. Nishida was not able to combine these various descriptions into one coherent notion, but they partially converge in the sense of an undifferentiated whole that includes all its differentiations.