Jan Patočka on War: From Hysterical Men to the Solidarity of the Shaken

Jan Patočka’s essay, “The Wars of the Twentieth Century and the Twentieth Century as War,” is one of the most fascinating texts on the meaning of war and, in particular, the First World War. Patočka develops a profound meditation on the experience of the front introducing the idea of the “solidarity of the shaken” to define the particular bond that originates between soldiers who have experienced a shaking at the front. I start from the hypothesis that the “shaken” or “shocked” at the front suffered the psychological disease called “war neurosis” or “hysterical neurosis.” Although Patočka makes no explicit reference to war neurosis, terms such as “shakes” or “tremors” describe its very symptoms. My purpose in this paper is twofold: To interpret in the light of the Czech philosopher’s text the psychiatric diagnoses and therapies that the shaken German soldiers underwent during and after the Great War; and also, conversely, to read Patočka’s text in the light of the attitude of psychiatry at that time which was the extreme opposite of the “care for the soul.”