Objective Spirit: The Ethical Order

BB. Spirit
A. The True Spirit: The Ethical Order (§438-483)

Its essential spiritual being (Wesen) has been above designated as the ethical substance; spirit, however, is concrete ethical actuality. Spirit is the self of the actual consciousness...

Hegel identifies the ethical as the essence of Spirit and the Spirit as the inner self. It is the same, he claims, on the level of society, in which the Spirit is the human law. The human or practical law has its actualization in the government (§448). But the ethical is also actualized in the divine law, which is exemplified in natural "family" relations.

Hegel uses the traditional roles of women and men in their various relationships to discuss the interactions of the actualized human law, divine law; the personal and the universal. Ethical flux is the passage in to and fro between these extremes. In history this flux can be influenced by persons (§464). Justice is the force by which the balance of the two extremes can be restored - like the force of movement in the pendulum (§462).

I am not totally clear on the following paragraphs, which run through a quick discussion of the epic struggle between the two laws through history. Seems like the finiteness of the human law dooms it to lose, but the constant renewal of the human players keeps the whole process in flux: a history long spiral of the same kind as all of Hegel's processes.