Richard Taylor (philosopher)

Richard Clyde Taylor (November 5, 1919 – October 30, 2003) was an American philosopher renowned for his contributions to metaphysics.

He was also an internationally known beekeeper.

Taylor received his PhD at Brown University, where his supervisor was Roderick Chisholm.

He taught at Brown University, Columbia and the University of Rochester, and had visiting appointments at about a dozen other institutions.

Taylor's 1962 essay "Fatalism" was the subject of David Foster Wallace's undergraduate thesis at Amherst College, published in 2011 together with Taylor's essay and contemporary responses under the title Fate, Time, and Language: An Essay on Free Will.

Taylor made significant contributions to beekeeping.

His best-known book was Metaphysics (1963).

Other works included Action and Purpose (1966), Good and Evil (1970) and Virtue Ethics (1991).

Professor Taylor was also the editor of The Will to Live: Selected Writings of Arthur Schopenhauer.

He was an enthusiastic advocate of virtue ethics.

He also wrote influential papers on the meaning of life, which, like Albert Camus, he explored through an examination of the myth of Sisyphus.

He owned three hundred hives of bees and, from 1970, produced mostly comb honey.

He explained his management techniques in several books, including The Comb Honey Book and The Joys of Beekeeping.

In 1993, he debated William Lane Craig over the subject 'Is The Basis For Morality Natural or Supernatural?'.

Notable philosophers who studied under Taylor as graduate students include Norman Bowie, Myles Brand, Keith Lehrer, and Peter van Inwagen.

Taylor died at the age of 83 on October 30, 2003, in his home in Trumansburg, New York due to complications ensuing from lung cancer.

Included among Richard Taylors publications are the following texts: