«Come un’unica famiglia». Lo Stato mondiale nel pensiero internazionale di Arnold J. Toynbee

This chapter investigates Arnold J. Toynbee’s international thought by focusing on a relatively overlooked element of his work: the idea of a world state. From the 1920s to the 1970s, Toynbee sought a political solution capable of ensuring global stability and peace. Confronted with the realities of the atomic age, he increasingly regarded the peaceful and voluntary unification of humanity as the only viable response to the threat of mutual nuclear annihilation. The chapter traces the evolution of Toynbee’s approach across several phases. In the 1920s and 1930s, he articulated a liberal vision closely linked to the tradition of British imperial internationalism. From the 1940s onward, he shifted toward a more explicitly cosmopolitan perspective grounded in imaginative political reform, ultimately advancing a spiritually oriented - and in many respects utopian - conception of world unity.