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Transcendental Horizon, Correlationism & Heideggerian Critique

Hegelian Dialectics & Ontology · 9 concepts · 29 talks · 43.2 hours · 2010–2023
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Heidegger’s distinction between the horizon of meaning (ontological) and entities/reality (ontic), which Žižek argues Heidegger fails to apply consistently to his own antisemitism.

2010: 1 talk 2011: 1 talk 2012: 4 talks 2013: 1 talk 2015: 2 talks 2016: 2 talks 2018: 4 talks 2019: 4 talks 2020: 1 talk 2021: 2 talks 2022: 3 talks 2023: 4 talks
≤2000talks carrying this idea, per year2026

In his words 1

“Nature is always a historical category.”
25:53 Figures of Post-Humanity · transcendental approach / Western Marxism

The stories that teach it

the jokes and anecdotes he reaches for when he works in this idea, ranked by how many of its talks they turn up in; each card is one story, with every retelling on its page

anecdote · in 4 of its talks

God Created Fossils

A theologian friend of Darwin, accepting both Darwinism and biblical literalism, resolved the contradiction by arguing God directly created fossils as a 'false opening', just as a stage designer creates a false background. Žižek uses this not to endorse it but as a perfect mod…
example · in 2 of its talks

Hysterical question: 'Tell me why do you love me'

The eternal feminine question 'Tell me why you love me' is not neurotic nagging but the radical Lacanian question 'what kind of object am I for you?', the origin of all genuine subjective questioning.
example · in 2 of its talks

Heidegger: Jews wanted their own extermination

Žižek cites Heidegger's most extreme claim: that antisemitism (killing Jews) was actually what the Jews themselves wanted, and the Germans were merely manipulated by them to do it, Žižek calls it 'breathtaking.'
example · in 2 of its talks

Woody Allen's Love and Death and the repressed Dostoevsky

Woody Allen's film parodies Tolstoy (War and Peace) but never names Dostoevsky, the repressed binary signifier. Yet Dostoevsky returns through all his novel titles embedded in dialogue ('that idiot… committed the crime and got the punishment… that Karamazov brother…'). Illustr…
example · in 2 of its talks

Hegel on madness and habit

Hegel's Philosophy of Spirit argues that madness is the structural presupposition for subjectivity, and habit is the attempt to control this constitutive madness.
anecdote · in 2 of its talks

Gianni Vattimo’s Defense of Heidegger

Žižek describes leftist philosopher Gianni Vattimo’s attempt to save Heidegger by arguing he was just a 'stupid local guy' making a concrete mistake, ignoring that Heidegger’s philosophy itself warns against confusing metaphysical stance with concrete people.

Waldsterben (Dying Forests)2Billy Bathgate / bad novel and bad movie generating virtual ideal2God as Lazy Programmer2Hitchcock's Vertigo, the missing underwear2Benjamin Libet's Experiment2Žižek's father dying, no deathbed reconciliation2Lacanian jealous husband2coffee without cream / coffee without milk3Schindler's List, the girl in red1Sloterdijk's cupola / globe metaphor1

Where it comes up 29

32 moments located in the transcripts, click a timestamp to play from there

Zizek Studies Conference2018-05-19 · 1:01:00
10:33 transcendental approach
… Can we break out of this, I call it, transcendental approach, which is ultimately something that unites such opposite phenomena like Martin Heidegger's thought, deconstructionists and so on? This idea …
12:44 Ereignis
… He didn't claim that the ontological event, Ereignis, horizon of being empirically creates things.
In Conversation with Jonathan Derbyshire2012-06-12 · 1:56:53
31:53 transcendental approach
… I'm not a continental philosopher in this sense of transcendental historicism.
Figures of Post-Humanity2018-11-07 · 1:54:00
25:58 transcendental approach
… And this is for me the transcendental approach.
Slavoj Zizek lecture Totality or Assemblage 02pub. 2022-02-24 · 1:42:42
1:19:33 transcendental approach
… How to move beyond this transcendental horizon without regressing to some naive realism? Because on the one hand it's clearly that I take this from Quentin Meillassoux that transcendentalism cannot be the ultimate position.
Slavoj Zizek vs. Terry Pinkard (How to Read Hegel)pub. 2022-07-19 · 1:27:59
54:40 transcendental approach
… For Hegel, even our highest self-reflection, basic let's call it transcendental stance, is always mediated by what materially goes on.

The company it keeps

thought with
Quentin Meillassoux10Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling14Graham Harman7Martin Heidegger19Michel Foucault18Jacques Derrida12Marquis de Sade6Daniel Dennett7Georg Lukács8Stephen Hawking7Georges Bataille4Johann Gottlieb Fichte4Benedictus de Spinoza6Catherine Malabou5Immanuel Kant17Claude Lévi-Strauss5
alongside works
Critique of Pure Reason6After Finitude5Being and Time4Less Than Nothing7Phenomenology of Spirit7Freiheitsschrift3History and Class Consciousness4Disparities3Antigone5Logics of Worlds3Being and Event3Star Wars3Hegel in a Wired Brain3Capital7Freedom Evolves2The Animal That Therefore I Am2

Nearest in meaning

Transgenderism & The Cartesian CogitoHistory of Philosophy & Reading the CanonQuantum Mechanics & OntologyAufhebung (Sublation) & Determinate NegationTautology, Infinite Judgment & Pure FormPhilosophy of Language, the Signifier & WritingMysticism & The AbsoluteŽižek's Hegel & Contemporary Hegel Debates

Concepts in this idea 9

13
transcendental approach
Žižek's critical name for dominant continental philosophy, the view that all one can do is describe the hermeneutic horizon within which questions arise, without asking direct ontological questions about reality.
 5
Ereignis
Heidegger's term for the ontological event or disclosure of being, cited to show Heidegger himself acknowledged he never addressed how things are outside such horizons.
 5
ontological difference
Heidegger’s distinction between the horizon of meaning (ontological) and entities/reality (ontic), which Žižek argues Heidegger fails to apply consistently to his own antisemitism.
 5
correlationism
A term from speculative realism (Meillassoux) referring to the view that we only have access to the correlation between thinking and being, not being itself; Žižek notes Meillassoux renounced his earlier anti-correlationist stance.
 1
technological nihilism
The state where humans are reduced to objects of scientific experiments, economic exploitation, and mass culture, which Heidegger identifies as the core of modernity.
 1
the transcendental game
Žižek's critical term for the move, shared by early Lacan and Derrida, of positing an always-already present condition (the Big Other, writing) from which one cannot step outside, a quasi-transcendental circle.
 1
transcendental philosophers
Žižek's classification of Heidegger and Derrida, not in the Kantian sense of eternal a priori structures, but as those who analyze the non-transparent, historically determined horizon of meaning into which we are thrown.
 1
transcendental vs. positive notion of reality
Žižek's framing of the central tension between the hermeneutic horizon of meaning (transcendental) and the positive, natural-scientific account of reality.