Radical Historicity

Radical Historicity, as elaborated in Žižek's reading of Heidegger in Less than Nothing, names the condition in which transcendental horizons themselves—the very frameworks through which beings are disclosed—are subject to historical transformation, with no super-subject, no Absolute Spirit, and no regulating agent standing behind or above that transformation. This is distinguished from ordinary historicism (the claim that ideas, values, or knowledge are historically conditioned) by its transcendental depth: it is not merely the content of thought or the objects of experience that change, but the modes of disclosure of Being as such. The shift Žižek tracks in Heidegger moves from the formal-transcendental analysis of Sein und Zeit—where Dasein's existential structure is mapped with quasi-Kantian rigor—toward the later concept of Ereignis (appropriating event), in which even the transcendental framework is itself historically eventful, arriving and withdrawing without being sent by any subject.

This means that historicity, in the radical sense, cannot be recuperated by any philosophy of the subject—Hegelian or otherwise. Where Hegel's Absolute Knowing might appear to thematize the historical movement of Spirit, it still posits a meta-level subject (Spirit itself) whose self-recognition is the telos of history. Radical Historicity refuses this: the "different modes of the disclosure of being" succeed and displace one another without synthesis, without telos, and without an agent capable of surveying them from outside. Žižek deploys this formulation primarily to mark the fundamental difference between Heidegger and Badiou on ontological difference—and to diagnose the internal tension in Sein und Zeit (authenticity vs. inauthenticity, engagement vs. withdrawal) as one that can only be resolved by accepting that even the terms of that tension are themselves historically conditioned horizons.

In slavoj-zizek-less-than-nothing-hegel-and-the-shadow-of-dialectical-materialism-v, Radical Historicity functions as a pivot point in Žižek's comparative ontology, positioned at the intersection of Heidegger's Ereignis and the Lacanian-inflected Hegelian problematic that structures the whole book. The concept is an extension and complication of Dialectics: where dialectics in the Hegelian mode still operates under the sign of a synthesizing movement (even if that synthesis is endlessly deferred or paradoxical), Radical Historicity names the condition of a historicity that cannot be dialectically sublated—there is no Aufhebung of one transcendental horizon into another, only the sheer event of disclosure and withdrawal. It thus runs up against the limits of Absolute Knowing: Hegel's culminating moment still implies a subject (Spirit) that can, at least retrospectively, comprehend the whole sequence of its self-alienations, whereas Radical Historicity forecloses any such retrospective comprehension by denying any "agent regulating the process."

The concept also stands in productive tension with the cross-referenced Ontological Difference and Ereignis. Heidegger's ontological difference (between Being and beings) is, for Žižek, precisely what Radical Historicity historicizes: the very differential that structures the disclosure of beings is itself mutable, eventful, non-eternal. The concept's relationship to the Real (another cross-reference) is inferential but structurally coherent: if the Real in Lacan names what resists symbolization, then the groundlessness of transcendental horizons—their sheer contingency and lack of a super-subject—functions analogously to the Real as an irreducible remainder that no symbolic or conceptual system can fully master. Radical Historicity thus marks, within the Heideggerian tradition, a problem structurally homologous to what Lacanian theory calls the non-dialectizable remainder that neither dialectics nor Absolute Knowing can absorb.

Less Than Nothing: Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical MaterialismSlavoj Žižek · 2012 (page unknown)

Heidegger's achievement is to elaborate a radically historicized transcendentalism: Heideggerian historicity is the historicity of transcendental horizons themselves, of the different modes of the disclosure of being, with no agent regulating the process

The phrase "historicity of transcendental horizons themselves" is theoretically explosive because it pushes historicity to the level that Kant had declared immune to empirical variation—the very conditions of possible experience—while "no agent regulating the process" simultaneously refuses the Hegelian rescue operation that would reintroduce a subject (Spirit) to govern that movement, leaving the transformation of horizons as genuinely groundless and eventful.