Determinism functions primarily as an excuse mechanism against anguish.

Evidence

Psychological determinism, before being a theoretical conception, is first an attitude of excuse, or if you prefer, the basis of all attitudes of excuse. It is reflective conduct with respect to anguish; it asserts that there are within us antagonistic forces whose type of existence is comparable to that of things. It attempts to fill the void which encircles us, to re-establish the links between past and present, between present and future. It provides us with a nature productive of our acts, and these very acts it makes transcendent; it assigns to them a foundation in something other than themselves by endowing them with an inertia and externality eminently reassuring because they constitute a permanent game of excuses. Psychological determinism denies that transcendence of human reality which makes it emerge in anguish beyond its own essence. At the same time by reducing us to never being anything but what we are, it reintroduces in us the absolute positivity of being-in-itself and thereby reinstates us at the heart of being. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 254

Categorization

• DEFINE: Sartre defines psychological determinism not as a theory but as a flight-attitude, an excuse structure — a key move for the systematic backdrop.
• XREF: Connects to the current reading purpose: Beauvoir’s ethics of ambiguity will inherit this idea that deterministic claims are comforting excuses against lived freedom. — connects to: Biological determinism is used to excuse structural inequality.; The determinist denial of agency is itself a moral position of nonaccountability; The supposed intuition of freedom is a constructed evasion of anguish (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Biological determinism is used to excuse structural inequality. #exemplifies (0.85)
• Popular psychology functions mainly to displace blame from evil actors onto prior causes #exemplifies (0.85)
• The supposed intuition of freedom is a constructed evasion of anguish #corroborates (0.82)
• The determinist denial of agency is itself a moral position of nonaccountability #expands (0.80)
• The dramatic-necessity excuse for violence is tautological self-deception #expands (0.80) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 866
• Necessitarian justification allows killing without hesitation or regret #expands (0.78)
• Radical neuroscience determinism would absolve everyone of moral responsibility #expands (0.75) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 314
• Fear and anguish are the same situation judged from opposite directions of causality #qualifies (0.75) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 236