Richard Clyde Taylor[2] (November 5, 1919 – October 30, 2003)[3] was an American
philosopher renowned for his contributions to
metaphysics. He was also an internationally known
beekeeper.
Biography
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. 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.[4][5] He was an enthusiastic advocate of
virtue ethics.[6] He also wrote influential papers on the
meaning of life, which, like
Albert Camus, he explored through an examination of the myth of
Sisyphus.
Taylor's 1962 essay "Fatalism"[7] 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.[8]
Taylor made significant contributions to
beekeeping. 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.[9]
In 1993, he debated
William Lane Craig over the subject 'Is The Basis For Morality Natural or Supernatural?'.[10]
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.[11]
Publications
Included among Richard Taylors publications are the following texts:[12]
External videos
You may read works by Richard Taylor including: "Metaphysics" "Good and Evil: A New Direction" "The Will to Live: Selected Writigns by Arthur Schopenhauer"
Here on Archive.org
The Will to Live: Selected Writings of Arthur Schopenhauer. Ed. Richard Tayler.(1962)[13]
^https://www.worldcat.org/title/887321The Will to Live: Selected Writings of Arthur Schopenhauer. Ed. Richard Tayler. F. Unger Publishing Co., New York 1967 & 1962 on worldcat.org
LaScola, Russell (1992), "A Common Sense Approach to the Mind-body Problem: A Critique of Richard Taylor", Journal of Philosophical Research, 17: 279–286,
doi:
10.5840/jpr_1992_24