This is a very thought-provoking prism. And as usual your diagrams are fascinating and most helpful. What software do you use to produce them?
I’d characterize the themes of the spirit vs the letter of the law a little differently. The so-called spirit of the law gets at religious experience, not just the conscience. So, the spirit of the law wouldn’t be just humanistic, secular morality, but the countercultural, prophetic vision that goes back ultimately to entheogens and to the shamanic basis of religion and art.
The letter of the law is more about following or managing than leading a social movement. I think, then, that that side of the divide would encompass what you call the centrism of power’s authority. Often, debates about the letter of the law are disingenuous and Machiavellian. You find the interpretation that suits some distribution of power, and you codify and glorify that interpretation, using the sacred text’s mystique for totalitarian purposes.
The underlying conflict, therefore, is between anti-social and pro-social human tendencies. I’d look at Georges Bataille on this, for instance. His connection between the sacred and the taboo is relevant here. The question is how much revelation we can stomach while keeping the peace in society. Mainstream culture adopts some artistry and prophetic visionary experience but only by taming them and marginalizing the extremes.
On this spectrum you’d have:
(1) introversion, creative mental illness, uncompromising artistic and prophetic integrity, on the one side (underlying the spirit of the law)
(2) extroversion, oppressive mental illness (sociopathy), bureaucratic automatism, infantilization, and other dehumanizations, on the other (underlying the letter of the law)
(3) perhaps some pragmatic middle ground, a filtering of (1) by way of necessarily lowering the standards in dealing with the mass audience.
The best of conservatism would side with (3), but generally conservatism belongs to (2), to the scheme of rationalizing gross power inequalities in society with disingenuous appeals to neutered forms of (1).
