QuestionsWhat is a just society?Do not change a received law lightly
What is a just society?Tradition

Do not change a received law lightly

Montaigne against innovation; "laws are laws"; the mystical foundation of authority

Michel de Montaigne 1533 · 1592'Each man calls barbarism whatever is not his own practice': our customs are not the measure of everything.
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What it claims

Unless the gain is evident, a received law should not be changed: reason serves to explain and extend the custom received, not to divert it.

Why

Touching one law shakes the whole structure, and the gain is often doubtful while the disorder is certain.

The same idea through history
Montesquieu1721In the Persian Letters, the character Usbek writes that it is sometimes necessary to change certain laws, "but the case is rare": then "one must touch them only with a trembling hand". A character is speaking, not necessarily Montesquieu himself.
In short

"Do not change a received law lightly" is an argument by Michel de Montaigne (Essays, I, 23 "Of custom, and that we should not easily change a law received"; III, 13) on the question "What is a just society?" (answer: tradition). Its claim: Unless the gain is evident, a received law should not be changed: reason serves to explain and extend the custom received, not to divert it. According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the argument is valid only if one grants a premise the author leaves unstated (P3, P5). AskPhilosophy presents 3 objections, 1 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

Essays, I, 23 "Of custom, and that we should not easily change a law received"; III, 13
Valid with an implicit premise

Montaigne saw the wars of religion tear France apart in the name of reforms that promised to improve everything. From this he draws a caution: a received law may be imperfect, but changing it almost always costs more than its flaw. He does not say that laws are just. He says they hold because they are established, and that whoever wants to remake them must be sure he sees both the evil he removes and the good he puts in its place. He admits one exception: when necessity is so pressing that the laws must give it some room.

P1A political order is like a building of joined parts: one cannot stir one without the whole body feeling it. Changing a law therefore always risks effects one cannot see.
P2Laws keep their credit because they are established laws, not because they are just: this is the "mystical foundation" of their authority. Touching one wears down that authority itself.
P3 · implicit premiseShaking the building and wearing down the authority of laws produces a certain disorder.
P4When the gain from the change is not evident, it is only a disputable opinion: whoever changes a law usurps the authority of judging, and must see clearly the fault of what he drives out and the good of what he brings in. Private reason has only a private jurisdiction.
P5 · implicit premisePaying a certain disorder for a merely disputable gain is a bad trade: it is bad husbandry to set up certain vices against errors that are only contested.
Therefore, unless the gain is evident, a received law should not be changed: reason serves to explain and extend the custom received, not to divert it.

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.
Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
Without the implicit premise: Without P5, the computer finds a case where the disorder is certain, the gain disputable, and the change is still worth it, for instance if the current law already does a certain harm.
The argument is valid with the hidden premises. Changing a law shakes the building (P1) and wears down its authority (P2), which produces a certain disorder (P3). If the gain is not evident, it stays disputable (P4). A certain disorder against a disputable gain is a bad trade (P5). Objections mostly target P2 and P5: they say that the disorder of unjust laws is also certain, and that one sometimes gains a lot by changing.
Analogy. One does not swap a part of a running car's engine on the mere idea that another part might be better: if one is wrong, everything stops, and one does not always know why.

Objections

3

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

Thomas Paine 1791 · attacks the conclusion

No generation has the right to bind the ones that follow. To govern beyond the grave is "the most ridiculous and insolent of all tyrannies": every generation must be free to act for itself, for it is the living who are to be served, not the dead.

a defender replies
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Edmund Burke defender of the argument · 1790
Burke, who writes before Paine and whom Paine is answering, replies in advance: society is a partnership between the living, the dead and those yet to be born. The living are not the sole masters of what they have received.
see the argument
Where the debate stands (our summary)Our summary: a basic disagreement, never settled. Paine starts from the rights of each living generation, Burke and Montaigne from what has been received and handed on. Montaigne does not speak of rights: he speaks of prudence.
John Stuart Mill 1859 · attacks premise 2

Custom is everywhere the great obstacle to human advancement: it is in unceasing antagonism to the spirit that aims at something better than the customary. Where it rules completely, "justice and right" mean conformity to custom, and nations stop advancing.

no reply
No reply possible: objection raised in 1859, after the author's death (1592).
The debate goes on (our summary) Our summary: Montaigne does not answer Mill, who came almost three centuries later. He does write that laws are often made "by fools" and that whoever obeys them because they are just does not obey them as he should. So he defends obedience out of prudence, not immobility: it remains to ask whether this prudence does not end up freezing everything.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Our summary: an open point. Mill replies that only the liberty of each person produces improvements; Montaigne's heirs reply that failed experiments cost everyone dearly. No widely accepted answer.
Condorcet 1795 · attacks premise 5

Condorcet means to show "by reasoning and by facts" that no limit has been set to the improvement of human faculties. If progress is real and unlimited, the gain from a change is no longer a gamble: history shows that correcting institutions can succeed.

no reply
No reply possible: objection raised in 1795, after the author's death (1592).
The debate goes on (our summary) Our summary: Montaigne could not answer. His argument does not deny progress: it speaks of a regime already suffering and the certain evils of a violent reform. It remains to ask whether, after the Terror that struck Condorcet himself, Montaigne's caution comes out confirmed.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Our summary: an open point. Reformers cite the progress won by changing laws; the cautious cite the revolutions that went wrong.