Political Philosophy

The Kingdom of God is Within You

♡+

Leo Tolstoy

1894

Banned immediately on publication in Russia and circulated underground across Europe, The Kingdom of God is Within You is Tolstoy's most systematic and radical work. It argues that Christianity, properly understood, demands total non-resistance to evil — and that this demand makes every institution of the modern state (armies, courts, prisons, police) incompatible with Christian life. Tolstoy traces the long history of the Church's accommodation to state power, which he regards as a betrayal of Christ's actual teaching, and calls instead for a society organised on the law of love alone. The book had a documented influence on Gandhi, who read it in 1894 while in South Africa, and on the early development of non-violent civil disobedience as a political strategy.