Will Buckingham

Learning to Play At the moment, I’m endeavouring to improve my rudimentary jazz piano playing.

Philosophy in times of strife The Chinese Legalist philosopher Han Fei (韓非) (281-233 BCE) was born a member of the royal household in the small state of Han.

Does philosophy change our minds?

The philosophical alchemist The philosopher Zou Yan (鄒衍) lived between 305 and 240CE.

Obsession and self-medication The philosopher Carneades was born in Cyrene, home of the Cyrenaic philosophers, sometime around 214 BCE.

Killed by an elephant The philosopher Jaimini is an obscure figure.

Truth, Reconciliation, and Ubuntu The day after Christmas day last year marked the death of Desmond Mpilo Tutu (1931 - 2021), the Nobel Prizewinner, anti-apartheid activist and former archbishop of Cape Town.

Hello, Stranger weaves together stories from Bulgaria to Birmingham to Burma, with philosophy and history and anthropology, to explore our ticklish relationships with people we don’t know.

Introduction Andy West is Philosopher in Residence at HMP Pentonville, and the author of the frankly brilliant The Life Inside: A Memoir of Prison, Family and Philosophy, which is due out from Picador in February 2022.

Hedonism and Philosophy The Greek philosopher Epicurus is a philosopher most often associated with hedonism, the idea that the good life is a life where we should seek to maximise our pleasure.

The puzzle of gift-giving It’s the time of year when, for those of us who live in countries and communities where Christmas is celebrated, we face the prospect of an explosion of gift exchange.

So, in those countries where Christmas is celebrated, it’s getting to that time of year when the eternal philosophical problem presents itself: *what should I get as a gift for Uncle Pedro?

The philosopher who couldn’t hold his drink Chrysippus was born sometime around 279 BCE in the town of Soli, now on the southern coast of Turkey.

Ritual is a Creative Act This is the second in a two-part series on ritual.

Looking at the overlooked Sometimes, the most philosophically interesting things in human life are those things that are so close to us, we overlook their importance.

Cultural connections The philosopher Pyrrho (c. 360 — c. 270 BCE) was born in Elis in Western Greece.

Living the Cynic Life Somewhere between a philosopher, a comedian, and an activist, Hipparchia of Maroneia was one of the most significant early philosophers in the Cynic school founded by Diogenes.

The first Stoic Zeno of Citium—not to be confused with Zeno of Elea—was the founder of the Stoic school of philosophy.

A This-Worldly Philosophy In popular culture, there can be a tendency to see Indian philosophical traditions as somehow inherently spiritual, and to contrast this supposedly mystical East with a rational West.

On Philosophy, Mountains and Finding Your Deepest Impulse Sophie Grace Chappell is a philosopher, a poet, a mountaineer and a trans woman.

What’s the Point?

Aristotle is one of the most influential of all philosophers in the Greek tradition.

Just a quick post this, to let you know that Hello, Stranger: How We Find Connection in a Disconnected World is going to be on Radio4’s Book of the Week from the 16th to the 20th of August!

Life Hui Shi (c. 370 — c. 310 BCE) was a Chinese philosopher known for his fascination with logical puzzles.

This piece was first published in the journal Museum & Society back in 2018.

Plato’s so-called ’theory of forms’ is one of the most enduringly strange parts of his philosophy.

“An elegant and moving exploration of what it means to connect with strangers turns into an elegy for a much-missed way of life…” I was very pleased to get this review of Hello, Stranger in last week’s Guardian from Keith Kahn-Harris.

I’ve just been asked to by Shepherd.com—the new site for book recommendations—to recommend five books about hospitality and the art of living alongside strangers.

Life Like Confucius and Mencius before him, it is said that the Confucian philosopher Xun Kuang, or Xunzi (c. 310 – 235 BCE), was an itinerant advisor to kings and rulers.

Last week, my thirteenth book—Hello, Stranger: How We Find Connection in a Disconnected World—was published by Granta in the UK.

The Aztecs and Philosophy Who were the Aztecs?

Zhuangzi: The Philosopher and the Text Zhuangzi (sometimes written Chuang Tzu), or Master Zhuang, is the name given to the philosopher Zhuang Zhou, who lived in China sometime between 369 and 286 BCE.

Last week, I was privileged to be invited to the Goethe Institut in Sofia, Bulgaria, to run a workshop for refugee writers via my project Wind&Bones, in collaboration with Caritas Sofia.

Life Arete of Cyrene was born into a philosophically-inclined family.

Welcome to the final piece in our season three series on the philosophy of work.

Life In China, Mencius is sometimes referred to as the Second Sage, meaning that in the Confucian tradition, he is second only to Confucius in importance.

In the last article in this series, we started exploring the opposite of work.

Life The great ventriloquist Plato was born in Athens some time between 428 and 423 BCE to a high-ranking Athenian family.

Over the last four articles in this series, we have been exploring divergent ideas of work.

The other week, the brilliant travel writer Tim Hannigan interviewed me and my Wind&Bones comrade Dr Hannah Stevens for the Dublin City University Credne creativity podcast.

In last week’s piece, we explored how work might of benefit to us—how it might even be our salvation.

The last year has been a strange one for travel-writing, and so I was delighted to be invited to contribute a chapter to this intriguing new collection edited by David Robinson and Gary Fisher.

Zeno of Elea is one of those shadowy ancient philosophers about whom we know very little.

In the last article in this series on different approaches to reading philosophy, I talked about the rights of the reader to plot a course through whatever they are reading in whatever way they wish—doubling-back, skipping, haphazard and unsystematic, lea…

In this article, we’re going to explore the idea that there is something inherently good about work, that work may in some sense be our salvation.

A couple of weeks back, I said I would post the text of my talk at the Third Annual World Yijing Summit Forum in Wuxi, as it might be interesting or at least entertaining for visitors to this site.

Understanding the world The story of philosophy is the story of human attempts to understand the world of which we are a part, and to understand ourselves.

It is the loveliest of poems: sad, defiant and intimate, all at the same time.

What is work?

Life The philosopher Mo Di, more commonly known as Mozi (or “Master Mo”) lived sometime between the fifth and fourth centuries BCE.