Conceptualizing a philosophy of education in response to suffering experiences: Technological rationality, logic of lemma, and the philosophy of pathos

The Great East Japan Earthquake of 11 March 2011, together with the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, exposed profound limits of modern science, technology, and civilisation. Beyond physical devastation, the disaster disrupted communities, intergenerational relations, and local cultures, leaving long-lasting social and ethical consequences. In its aftermath, Japanese scholarship has increasingly questioned technological rationality and instrumental modes of relating to nature. Yet within educational philosophy, fundamental re-examinations of its conceptual foundations remain limited. This paper seeks to articulate a new direction for educational philosophy capable of responding to catastrophic and pathic experience. Drawing on post-2011 critiques of science and technology, it examines two theoretical frameworks that move beyond instrumental rationality: Augustin Berque’s mesology (fūdo-gaku), developed in dialogue with Tetsurō Watsuji, and Tokuryu Yamauchi’s ‘logic of lemma’, a non-Aristotelian logic grounded in Nāgārjuna’s Madhyamaka philosophy. The logic of lemma, which admits a ‘middle’ between A and not-A, provides conceptual resources for rethinking human–nature relations and the relational ‘between’ of subject and environment. Building on these insights, the paper advances a philosophy of education grounded in knowledge of pathos—an orientation attentive to passivity, vulnerability, and sufferability. Such a perspective challenges technological rationality and functionalism, and affirms the fragility and uncontrollability inherent in human life. In doing so, it proposes an educational philosophy attuned not only to disaster and ecological crisis, but also to fundamental experiences of human existence.