Project Vision 21

The abundance of new laws, decrees, and ordinances at every level of government is a clear demonstration that the legal and judicial system is constantly playing catch-up in its effort to keep pace with the profound technological, social, and cultural changes of our time. At the same time, that abundance reveals something else: the decline of civic coexistence.

Several years ago, Argentine philosopher Darío Sztajnszrajber argued—this is not a direct quotation—that we have 19th-century schools, with 20th-century teachers, teaching 21st-century students. The same idea could be applied to justice: we have 19th-century laws, 20th-century judges, and 21st-century citizens. That discrepancy, I believe, contributes to the proliferation of laws.

But there is something more. As Horace warned centuries ago (Odes, III.24.35–36), Quid leges sine moribus / vanae proficiunt? (“What good are empty laws without morals?”). In other words, laws, decrees, and ordinances proliferate when decency and civic coexistence disappear, overwhelmed by a sea of individualism and narcissism.

In this context, the concept of mores is important because it does not refer simply to private “morality” in the modern sense. It encompasses customs, habits, social norms, inherited practices, and civic character. Put differently, Horace is asking: what can laws accomplish when the civic ethos necessary to sustain them has disappeared?

The question answers itself, as the facts of everyday life also demonstrate.

Tacitus, for his part, adds another warning in Annals III.27, similar to Horace’s but from a different perspective: Corruptissima re publica plurimae leges (“The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws.”). The proliferation of laws, then, reveals not only a mismatch between law and reality and the loss of civic ethos, but also the degree of corruption within the state.

Far from being a remedy, the multiplication of laws may instead be a symptom of the deterioration of civic and moral order. When fundamental norms—customs, character, and civic discipline, however they may be understood and practiced—have eroded, multiplying laws does not necessarily restore social coexistence.

This situation led me to think about what Hegel wrote in his Lectures on the Philosophy of History: “Peoples and governments have never learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it.”

The key phrase is “principles deduced from it.” Hegel is not suggesting that humanity is condemned simply to repeat the same empty mistakes. Rather, he meant that every historical epoch is unique and that the general lessons of the past cannot be directly applied to present crises, because those crises are different.

There is, therefore, one crucial factor in human life that neither an abundance of laws nor the lessons of the past can restore: love. Kierkegaard expressed it in the epilogue to Fear and Trembling: “No generation has learned from another how to love.”