“Deternine” investigates the ideological structure of the concept of liberal autonomy through the metaphor of a magic trick, based on the thesis: ideology is magic. It does not function because the audience is unaware that it is being deceived. It functions precisely because the subject desires to be deceived. We know that a latent mechanism is at work — and yet we continue to marvel at the illusion. Freedom operates in a similar way. The modern liberal subject understands itself as autonomous, even though its decisions are already pre-structured by symbolic orders, experiential frameworks, and social expectations. “Deternine” conceives of freedom as a magical staging; the suggested totality of available options determines whether and how the subject hallucinates itself as free — even when these allegedly available possibilities were never structurally accessible in the first place. The ideological-magical operation does not lie in enforcing choice, but in making determination experientially appear as a personal and autonomous decision.