About the author
Russian novelist and moral philosopher (1828–1910), who after writing War and Peace and Anna Karenina underwent a religious conversion and became a radical Christian anarchist and pacifist. The Kingdom of God Is Within You (1894) argues that the literal teaching of Jesus — nonresistance to evil by force — condemns the state, war, and coercion altogether. The book directly shaped Gandhi's philosophy of nonviolent resistance.
Synopsis
A Christian anarchist argument that true Christianity conflicts with violence, coercive state authority, and war.
Core passage idea
Paraphrase · Public domainTolstoy argues that Christian nonresistance undermines the moral legitimacy of violence and state coercion.
This forces a hard question: can Christian ethics be reconciled with political violence?
To avoid a bubble
Pair with Hobbes, Weber, or realist accounts of political violence.
Reading note
Important for religion, pacifism, anarchism, and critiques of state violence.
Best paired with
Max Weber, Politics as a Vocation.