Garnett's new book explores political philosophy of Miłosz

May 15, 2025

JMC Prof. Sherman Garnett’s The Reluctant Political Thinker: Czesław Miłosz on Crisis, the Poetic Life, and the Cold War Political Imaginary has been published by De Gruyters.

Czesław Miłosz was a prominent poet and writer for almost eight decades. He remains a figure in world literature four decades after he won the Nobel Prize and more than two decades after his death.

Though Miłosz saw himself as an artist soaring above the tumult of politics, he left the building blocks for an analysis of his political and social thought in plain sight. Garnett's book explores this neglected aspect of Miłosz’s thinking by closely studying a wide range of his writings, arguing that he held a unique, nuanced political philosophy.

The book had its genesis when Garnett attended a poetry reading by Miłosz soon after he won the Nobel Prize in 1980. Miłosz’s works (and Polish dictionaries) have ever since been constant companions, though this book grew out of issues and readings that were part of teaching at Madison and lectures at MSU and Jagiellonian University.

These issues, such as Miłosz’s observations on totalitarianism and democracy, dissent, emigration, the United States and Soviet Union, and the ongoing “great crisis of civilization” offer insights for contemporary global social, humanitarian and ecological challenges.

Garnett is a professor and former dean of James Madison College He teaches and researches literature/culture and politics, post-Soviet and post-Cold War politics, and nuclear weapon and disarmament policy.