Obeying the spirit of the law shows respect for the judgment of the lawgiver. Obeying the letter, loopholes and all, instead shows respect for the authority of the lawgiver. Judaism and Islam are more about obeying God's commands than agreeing with His opinions--the Talmud has "it is not in Heaven," the Hadith have God needing to be talked down from commanding that Muslims pray a hundred times every day. The parent/child iterated game is also about authority--if the child just defied the parent, the parent would need to escalate or be defied on something more important later.
My intuition about the implicit magic system for the Devil's bargains is that they're only valid if the Devil keeps his word. The Devil can't just drag whoever he wants to off to Hell, or else he wouldn't bother with bargains. So he must be dependent on some external arbitration process, one that might decide to nullify the father's bargain if the Devil didn't keep the one with the son.
Many stories about the rules-lawyering the devil were originally about faeries, so its propably not about anything specific to that character or mythology.
Love this post! Here's a thought on why the Devil has to abide by the letter of the law. My guess is that Christian societies that created the devil built him within the framework of a system that is orderly (given that its order, and the meaning that provides, is a major reason for its existence), and so the devil, as part of this system, must behave in an orderly way-- by following the laws laid out by some greater power (God? The Universe?). The result is that people's intuitions about the devil are of a being who is evil but still must comply with rule of law, not because he wants to, but because he is literally compelled to. And one result of THAT is that humans can outsmart the devil, because while he has power over them, he is still beholden to an even greater power. If he weren't-- if his behavior were chaotic-- he wouldn't serve the purpose embodying evil in a world where good and evil both exist, but in an orderly manner (such that people who are good are reliably rewarded, people who are bad are punished, etc). And the same thinking applies to other magical / mystical creatures that exist within larger systems of order, like a Genie, whose 3 wishes are are classically outsmarted by the well known loophole of wishing for more wishes! - Jess
For any computer system, the "letter of the law" IS the "spirit of the law". Ultimately, it's a mechanical device, so operationally the spirit of the law is exactly how the law is defined, no more and no less. That's why programming is so hard: it's easy to have pleasant intentions, but it's difficult to get the commands exactly right so that they express those intentions. When the code doesn't align with the spirt, that's not a "loophole" -- it's a "bug".
Orthodox Judaism is unusual among religions in that it is so focused on words and texts, and enormous effort is devoted to determining the exact meaning of any passage. So, again, the "letter" of the law really is the same thing as the "spirit" of the law, which is God. God is all-powerful, and presumably is able to craft accurate prose regulations. So if the rules don't explicitly forbid getting a goy to flip the switch, then that means that God doesn't object. You might think that's a strange way for God to be, but that's your problem, and I think the Orthodox would object that somehow this is exploiting a "loophole".
Random fact: some elevators have a setting that makes the elevator continually cycle going up and down, and automatically stops at every floor. That's because pressing a button for your floor is deemed to be labor and thus proscribed during the Sabbath. So for the Sabbath the staff sets the elevator to this cycle mode, and then everyone can use the elevator with violating the rules.
This is a great post! The final question really got my gears grinding. I think the answer to the question, ‘why do we find a fictional character who does evil, but adheres to the law plausible?, has something to do with the idea that we have an innate tendency, in the absence of a central authority, to organize around honor culture. Even if you’re a criminal, if you don’t follow norms around honor, you’ll loose the respect of your fellow criminals.(e.g. dueling) I first read about this in Blueprint by Nicholas Christokas.
Your post must have primed me to tune in to references to loopholes - this morning found this in 'The Sorrows of Young Werther' by Goethe: (Werther writing to his friend) 'Forgive me, then, if I concede your entire argument and still try to find a loophole between the either and the or.'
It made me wonder whether loopholes might be broadly categorised as the middle path we gravitate towards when confronted with stark choices - the either and the or. Legal compliance or non-compliance. Obedience or disobedience etc. It seems to me that 'stark choices' are perhaps a necessary condition for the discovery/devising of a loophole.
It also strikes me that stark-choices-with-a-loophole is the formula for much comedy where the loophole is the punchline and the reason the joke is funny is because the stark choices seem obvious/conventional/inescapable and the loophole is utterly unexpected.
Great post. My take for why the Devil is lawfully evil is because it makes for a better story. If he was chaotically evil, he’d never lose and people would be harmed without reason. What’s the point of telling such a story? Because he’s lawfully evil, in stories like these, people get a chance to win.
I think part of the thing with the devil may be that we expect "monstrous" entities to have essential natures -- the devil is thoroughly evil, so consistent rule-following may be an aspect of seeing him as consistently having traits. (Also I think there's an interesting ambiguity in how you're supposed to interpret the opening story: did the lawyer defeat the devil through trickery, or did he do the same thing as his brothers and construct a tribute to devilishness?)
I also have a post where I make a case the rules tend to have negative connotations, so it could be somewhat appropriate for a character seen as bad (the devil) to be associated with things that are bad (rules). https://ttrpgteleology.substack.com/p/rules-and-systems-have-bad-pr
I wonder whether the law-abiding devil exists to allow us to tell stories about our ambivalence around technical progress (or other forms of “progress” such as with social norms).
Take recent advances in technology such as genetically modified crops or embryo selection. Have we gone against the spirit of Gods law and are “playing God”, or have we outsmarted the devil?
Maybe our early ancestors recognised that apparently beneficial changes could have unseen costs, and we came up with narratives around tricking the devil and exploiting loopholes in Gods order to express this.
Ha, this brings up slightly triggering memories of formative experiences, not completely defused by the compassion of adulthood and time elapsed... I was that kid bigtime. I was a master of disdain for the letter of the law, especially when poorly worded. My parents didn't find it funny. It got them right in the gears. They would howl about me being obtuse and having an attitude problem. It's ok, we're all friends now, but in certain moods I do still have a nasty aggrieved pattern around the meaning of words. Sometimes in my meanest moods it really does seem ok to me to ignore or circumvent people when they use words unskilfully or phrase things ambiguously
I really enjoyed this! It got me thinking about how the concept of loopholes relates to my field of linguistics. In linguistics, loopholes could be seen as a form of pragmatic ambiguity. We interpret language not only based on literal meaning but through implicature—understanding what is implied beyond the words. Exploiting loopholes, which is something my three year old is becoming rather adept at, relies on this gap between explicit and implicit meaning - It's a reflection of how human communication often leaves room for negotiation!
Loopholery seems to be an interesting mix of Derrida, Wittgenstein, Game Theory, and another hypothetical field we could call "Grammar of Casuistry". Sounds like an absolute buffet for a linguist!
Obeying the spirit of the law shows respect for the judgment of the lawgiver. Obeying the letter, loopholes and all, instead shows respect for the authority of the lawgiver. Judaism and Islam are more about obeying God's commands than agreeing with His opinions--the Talmud has "it is not in Heaven," the Hadith have God needing to be talked down from commanding that Muslims pray a hundred times every day. The parent/child iterated game is also about authority--if the child just defied the parent, the parent would need to escalate or be defied on something more important later.
My intuition about the implicit magic system for the Devil's bargains is that they're only valid if the Devil keeps his word. The Devil can't just drag whoever he wants to off to Hell, or else he wouldn't bother with bargains. So he must be dependent on some external arbitration process, one that might decide to nullify the father's bargain if the Devil didn't keep the one with the son.
(Or the Devil just respects getting lawyered.)
Many stories about the rules-lawyering the devil were originally about faeries, so its propably not about anything specific to that character or mythology.
Love this post! Here's a thought on why the Devil has to abide by the letter of the law. My guess is that Christian societies that created the devil built him within the framework of a system that is orderly (given that its order, and the meaning that provides, is a major reason for its existence), and so the devil, as part of this system, must behave in an orderly way-- by following the laws laid out by some greater power (God? The Universe?). The result is that people's intuitions about the devil are of a being who is evil but still must comply with rule of law, not because he wants to, but because he is literally compelled to. And one result of THAT is that humans can outsmart the devil, because while he has power over them, he is still beholden to an even greater power. If he weren't-- if his behavior were chaotic-- he wouldn't serve the purpose embodying evil in a world where good and evil both exist, but in an orderly manner (such that people who are good are reliably rewarded, people who are bad are punished, etc). And the same thinking applies to other magical / mystical creatures that exist within larger systems of order, like a Genie, whose 3 wishes are are classically outsmarted by the well known loophole of wishing for more wishes! - Jess
For any computer system, the "letter of the law" IS the "spirit of the law". Ultimately, it's a mechanical device, so operationally the spirit of the law is exactly how the law is defined, no more and no less. That's why programming is so hard: it's easy to have pleasant intentions, but it's difficult to get the commands exactly right so that they express those intentions. When the code doesn't align with the spirt, that's not a "loophole" -- it's a "bug".
Orthodox Judaism is unusual among religions in that it is so focused on words and texts, and enormous effort is devoted to determining the exact meaning of any passage. So, again, the "letter" of the law really is the same thing as the "spirit" of the law, which is God. God is all-powerful, and presumably is able to craft accurate prose regulations. So if the rules don't explicitly forbid getting a goy to flip the switch, then that means that God doesn't object. You might think that's a strange way for God to be, but that's your problem, and I think the Orthodox would object that somehow this is exploiting a "loophole".
Random fact: some elevators have a setting that makes the elevator continually cycle going up and down, and automatically stops at every floor. That's because pressing a button for your floor is deemed to be labor and thus proscribed during the Sabbath. So for the Sabbath the staff sets the elevator to this cycle mode, and then everyone can use the elevator with violating the rules.
This is a great post! The final question really got my gears grinding. I think the answer to the question, ‘why do we find a fictional character who does evil, but adheres to the law plausible?, has something to do with the idea that we have an innate tendency, in the absence of a central authority, to organize around honor culture. Even if you’re a criminal, if you don’t follow norms around honor, you’ll loose the respect of your fellow criminals.(e.g. dueling) I first read about this in Blueprint by Nicholas Christokas.
Your post must have primed me to tune in to references to loopholes - this morning found this in 'The Sorrows of Young Werther' by Goethe: (Werther writing to his friend) 'Forgive me, then, if I concede your entire argument and still try to find a loophole between the either and the or.'
It made me wonder whether loopholes might be broadly categorised as the middle path we gravitate towards when confronted with stark choices - the either and the or. Legal compliance or non-compliance. Obedience or disobedience etc. It seems to me that 'stark choices' are perhaps a necessary condition for the discovery/devising of a loophole.
It also strikes me that stark-choices-with-a-loophole is the formula for much comedy where the loophole is the punchline and the reason the joke is funny is because the stark choices seem obvious/conventional/inescapable and the loophole is utterly unexpected.
"Intentionally violating the spirit of the law while following the letter of the law."
Not a bad but I think the loopholer is more indifferent to the spirit and intends their own gain in some way.
"soaking" for Mormons also turned out to be made up, like the air force drone story.
It was the equivalent of a religious 4 chan group demonstrating how easy it is to fool people (ie outsiders) when their biases are confirmed.
So does that mean that you're not allowed to do it? Uh oh . . .
Great post. My take for why the Devil is lawfully evil is because it makes for a better story. If he was chaotically evil, he’d never lose and people would be harmed without reason. What’s the point of telling such a story? Because he’s lawfully evil, in stories like these, people get a chance to win.
I think part of the thing with the devil may be that we expect "monstrous" entities to have essential natures -- the devil is thoroughly evil, so consistent rule-following may be an aspect of seeing him as consistently having traits. (Also I think there's an interesting ambiguity in how you're supposed to interpret the opening story: did the lawyer defeat the devil through trickery, or did he do the same thing as his brothers and construct a tribute to devilishness?)
I also have a post where I make a case the rules tend to have negative connotations, so it could be somewhat appropriate for a character seen as bad (the devil) to be associated with things that are bad (rules). https://ttrpgteleology.substack.com/p/rules-and-systems-have-bad-pr
I wonder whether the law-abiding devil exists to allow us to tell stories about our ambivalence around technical progress (or other forms of “progress” such as with social norms).
Take recent advances in technology such as genetically modified crops or embryo selection. Have we gone against the spirit of Gods law and are “playing God”, or have we outsmarted the devil?
Maybe our early ancestors recognised that apparently beneficial changes could have unseen costs, and we came up with narratives around tricking the devil and exploiting loopholes in Gods order to express this.
Ha, this brings up slightly triggering memories of formative experiences, not completely defused by the compassion of adulthood and time elapsed... I was that kid bigtime. I was a master of disdain for the letter of the law, especially when poorly worded. My parents didn't find it funny. It got them right in the gears. They would howl about me being obtuse and having an attitude problem. It's ok, we're all friends now, but in certain moods I do still have a nasty aggrieved pattern around the meaning of words. Sometimes in my meanest moods it really does seem ok to me to ignore or circumvent people when they use words unskilfully or phrase things ambiguously
Your link to "Circumventing the Law: Rabbinic Perspectives on Loopholes and Legal Integrity", by Elana Stein Hain s bad. It should be https://www.amazon.com/Circumventing-Law-Perspectives-Loopholes-Integrity/dp/1512824402
I really enjoyed this! It got me thinking about how the concept of loopholes relates to my field of linguistics. In linguistics, loopholes could be seen as a form of pragmatic ambiguity. We interpret language not only based on literal meaning but through implicature—understanding what is implied beyond the words. Exploiting loopholes, which is something my three year old is becoming rather adept at, relies on this gap between explicit and implicit meaning - It's a reflection of how human communication often leaves room for negotiation!
Loopholery seems to be an interesting mix of Derrida, Wittgenstein, Game Theory, and another hypothetical field we could call "Grammar of Casuistry". Sounds like an absolute buffet for a linguist!
Perhaps, whoever came up with the idea of the “Shabbos Goy" went to a Jesuit school?
https://slate.com/human-interest/1996/06/jesuitical-vs-talmudic.html