Absolute inherent necessity – or more concisely in German: Sachzwang – exists only under the law of nature. This determines the objective relations between causes and effects. In the field of social practice, however, we are dealing with the inter-subjective relations between subjects who in principle possess a free will. Human subjects act deliberately, and this means that they pursue certain intentions when they have reasons for doing so. Reasons can never be compulsive, precisely because they are addressed to the reason of free and autonomous subjects. They only formulate why an action is meaningful or desirable for the person who intends to carry it out and thus justify the desired decision. We can always in principle contradict the justifications put forward or played through by us in an ideal reversal of roles; we do not have to ‘follow’ them on all accounts. The causes of an empirical situation can of course be part of a justification, but reasons as such never have the character of a determining cause. Wherever this categorial difference is blurred and empirically given cause-effect relationships are presented directly as ‘inherently necessary’ reasons we are dealing with the abandonment of reflection in the face of tacitly assumed intentions which are not submitted to further examination. We are not then dealing with inherent objective necessities but with subjective mental constraints.