Richard Taylor (1919 — October 30, 2003) was an American philosopher renowned for his dry wit and his contributions to metaphysics. He was also an internationally-known beekeeper.Taylor took his PhD at Brown University, where his supervisor was Roderick Chisholm. He taught at Brown Univerity, 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). 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.
Richard 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.