James Tartaglia

James Phillip Frank Tartaglia (born 29 October 1973) is a British philosopher who defends metaphysical idealism and existential nihilism, as well as a jazz saxophonist whose "jazz-philosophy fusion" combines jazz music with philosophical ideas.
== Biography ==
Tartaglia was born in Portsmouth, England, and grew up in Hereford, where he started playing alto saxophone at age 11 after hearing Cannonball Adderley's recording of "Another Kind of Soul".Birmingham Post, 23 June 2016, p. 31 He was winner in the soloist category of the Daily Telegraph Young Jazz Competition in 1991 and successfully auditioned in Frankfurt for a scholarship to Berklee College of Music, Boston, where he studied from 1992-3; his saxophone teacher was George Garzone.James Tartaglia CV, Adrian Piper Foundation He began an economics degree at University College London in 1993, but soon switched to philosophy. He obtained a BA (1996), M.Phil. (1998) and Ph.D. (2001) in philosophy from UCL, where he studied with Tim Crane and J.J. Valberg. He was Visiting Lecturer at the University of Birmingham from 2001-2 and then was appointed Lecturer in Philosophy at Keele University in 2002, where he stayed to become Professor of Metaphysical Philosophy in 2017; his inaugural lecture was a jazz-philosophy fusion performance entitled, “I’m Gonna Tell You the Meaning of Life”.Keele University, events 2019 He is an Associate Editor at the journal Human Affairs.Human Affairs website 
== Philosophy ==
Tartaglia argues that nihilism is an evaluatively neutral fact about reality; nihilism is not a negative state of affairs, as it is standardly assumed to be, nor a positive state of affairs, as per the 'Sunny Nihilism' defended by Wendy Syfret.Good news for nihilists? Life is meaningless after all, say philosophers CBC Radio, December 14, 2021 Nihilism can make you happier, even in the Covid era. No really, let me explain The Guardian, 26 August 2021 When Tartaglia was questioned by Rowan Williams on BBC Radio 4's Moral Maze, Williams' line of questioning concerned the lack of moral guidance that his neutral nihilism offers. In response to a similar line of questioning from Rabbi Adam Jacobs, Tartaglia said the problem with using the meaning of life as a basis for moral judgements is that, "nobody's ever been able to agree on what it is." In a review of Philosophy in a Meaningless Life (2016) for Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, Guy Bennett-Hunter is sympathetic to Tartaglia's idealist 'transcendent hypothesis' but not his nihilism, arguing that there are various 'unstated affinities' between Tartaglia's views and those of Karl Jaspars, and that Jaspars, like David E. Cooper, manages to avoid nihilism by appealing to ineffability. A book symposium on Philosophy in a Meaningless Life was published in 2017, featuring responses to the book from Philip Goff, Ronald A. Kuipers, Tracy Llanera, Alan Malachowski, Bjørn Torgrim Ramberg, Brooke Alan Trisel and J.J. Valberg, among others. In Philosophy in a Technological World: Gods and Titans (2020), which Raymond Tallis endorsed as 'a major work of philosophy by one of the UK's most original philosophers', Tartaglia focuses on metaphysical idealism, for which he provides five arguments: the first about why there is anything at all, the second about consciousness, the third about the distinction between abstract and concrete, the fourth about the philosophy of time and the fifth about human history. In a review in Philosophy Now, Kieran Brayford writes that the 'book is terse, lively, and enjoyable' and that he would 'especially recommend it to those who feel instinctively rankled by its idealist leanings. There is enough in the book to maybe change your mind.' In popular writings and lectures about idealism, Tartaglia has emphasized its near universality within world culture and its ability to preserve common sense intuitions.
Category:1973 births
Category:People from Portsmouth
Category:University College London alumni
Category:British philosophers