The Pathetic Soul: Existentialism, Phenomenology and Pathos in Heschel’s Thought

These elements form Heschel’s idea of depth-theology with the pathetic soul at its heart. The lasting phenomenon of the self is the pathetic soul, suspended between Heschel’s ultimate rejection of Hasidism and metaphysics. The pathetic soul is an ontological presupposition that arises in the awareness that human being and being human are not coincidental. Their overlap is an existential mode of existence in which pathos is the foundation of a human ontology.

Heschel’s view of religion driven by this appearance, rejects the sentimentality of Hasidic thought, the irrationality of Kierkegaard and the impulsiveness of Scheler. Spirit propelled by pathos has an ontological quality apart from nature. Unlike modern phenomenologists who see religion as a natural process or an impossible phenomenological topic, Heschel subjects the ineffable to phenomenological analysis. The pathetic soul is the phenomenological answer to the question, ‘am I a person?’. Its reality is the lasting attachment to the ineffable viewed through the prism of shame, the original incompleteness of its being.