Pathos and the pathetic soul are at the heart of Heschel’s thinking. Heschel’s emergence from a Hasidic background and his encounter with phenomenology impel him to argue that Kierkegaard’s existentialism and Scheler’s phenomenology provide him with a basic understanding of pathos. The unique way in which Heschel characterizes the philosophical problem of being human, “the problem of the individual,“ propels his encounter with modernity, juxtaposes Rabbi Mendel of Kotzk with Kierkegaard, identifies the meaning of the biblical text as a pathetic vehicle and critiques Scheler’s metaphysics which is aligned with phenomenology.

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.