Abstract

The small connective words “soku” and “sokuhi,” typically found in the writings of the Kyoto school thinkers, have baffled many a Western reader. Describing what he termed the “logic of sokuhi,” Daisetz T. Suzuki famously wrote: “To say ‘A is A’ is to say ‘A is not A.’ Therefore, ’A is A.’” “Soku” is a connective word, meaning “that is,” or “id est”; “hi” negates the compound-word, adding the meaning of “not.” Nishida adopted and situated the “logic of sokuhi” in a philosophical context, especially in his final essay “Bashoteki ronri to shūkyōteki sekaikan” or “The Logic of Topos and the Religious Worldview”. This logic of sokuhi, however, came to Nishida’s attention only in the very last years of his life, leaving him very little time to develop it fully. In this paper, I explore the birth of this “logic of sokuhi” in Suzuki’s writings, its context and the import in the Diamond Sūtra, and Nishida’s elaboration of this logic. The goal of this paper is to elucidate this key phrase of Nishida’s thought and to evaluate its philosophical relevance.