  The fourth method is Nishida’s way of treating oppositions and distinctions, emphasizing alternatively their undifferentiated ground or their irreducible relation. He often sought to return (not reduce) oppositions and distinctions to the non-differentiated condition that underlies them, ultimately to the nothingness that gives rise to (or determines itself as) various distinctions. Although terms translating as “ground” or “foundation” are found throughout his works, this emphasis undermines any recourse to a founding principle or entity wholly transcendent to, and thus ultimately different from, the world or reality. “Absolute nothingness” may be understood as the lack of any positively definable transcendent ground. When for example Nishida writes “absolute nothingness transcends all that is, but at the same time all that is arises through it” (NKZ IX, 6), we may interpret him as pointing to an undifferentiated source beyond the distinctions it gives rise to, a source that is necessarily entailed by their being brought together precisely as distinct from one another.