Is philosophy dead? Stephen Hawking said so. See his oft-cited comments in The Grand Design (2010) on how philosophy has failed to keep up with physics. Not long ago, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson warned students away from it.

These prominent voices are not alone. Their claim is that philosophy has little to contribute to science, and by implication, is of little use in today’s world. They are wrong, but in an ‘interesting’ way. What can we learn from their error? That’s what we will explore here.

First, while it may seem to offer little to physics, philosophy is definitely not irrelevant to any serious understanding of the political trajectory of the late twentieth century. The two most influential political movements afoot in Western civilization today—that of the politically correct Left and that of the neoconservative (or “neocon”) Right—owe much to major political philosophers.

John Rawls and his major 1972 treatise A Theory of Justice stands behind many of the appeals to “social justice” made by liberal Democrats. One may also cite Frankfurt School political philosopher Herbert Marcuse as one of the primary heroes of the New Left earlier in the 1960s. His 1965 essay “Repressive Tolerance” offered the first philosophical defense of differential treatment that became par for the course when universities began developing affirmative action programs over the next decade, and then political correctness when white males began to chafe as a result of being disadvantaged by differential treatment.

Across the aisle, the mainstream Republicans who came to fill both Bush administrations and exercised profound influence on foreign policy even under Clinton, took their cue from University of Chicago political philosopher Leo Strauss. Many who served in or near George W. Bush’s White House in particular studied directly under Strauss, who believed that deception was acceptable in uniting a nation’s masses, and that if no crisis existed it might be necessary to “manufacture” one. He took his cue from Nazi-era philosopher Carl Schmitt.

In other words, the claim that philosophy is either dead or irrelevant to contemporary America, with the implication that there is no need to read and understand its major spokespersons, is simply uninformed—easily dismissed as mindless anti-intellectualism.

That said, philosophy may not be dead, but it is troubled—by relative invisibility outside its enclaves (where no one denies there is plenty of activity) and by a sense of defensiveness born of fear of irrelevance to the larger civilization. The latter is illustrated by the often testy replies to Hawking and Tyson on blogs and online forums too numerous to cite individually.

Some of philosophy’s troubles are of its own making; some are not. Much of it is highly specialized, with a vocabulary that takes years to master—rather like any university-based discipline. Many of its practitioners are by nature bashful and introverted. The subject has had few effective salespeople, even on college and university campuses.

One sees trouble in the fact that the vast majority of those who shaped the philosophical landscape of the past century are either dead or aging rapidly. They are not being replaced by voices of equivalent stature in younger generations—at least not in the U.S. (there are a few such voices in both Europe and Australia). That may seem like an unfair claim. Can’t such judgments be made only in retrospect?

Not necessarily. When Harvard philosopher Willard V.O. Quine’s major article “Two Dogmas of Empiricism” appeared in 1951—or when Cambridge philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations saw posthumous publication a couple of years later, there was no doubt whatsoever that events of the first importance had occurred. Analytic philosophy had been redirected; but these works had ramifications outside the field: for linguistics, for psychology, possibly even for our understanding of how perception operates in science.

We saw a similar response when Thomas S. Kuhn published The Structure of Scientific Revolutions in 1962, or when Richard Rorty’s Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature came out in 1979. While mainstream professional philosophers hesitated much more over these, again their impact on a wide variety of conversations both in and out of professional philosophy should have left no doubt that these were works that should be read. The former should have laid to rest the positivism that still rears its head occasionally (in, e.g., the militant atheism afoot in many quarters today).

Robert Nozick’s Anarchy, State and Utopia did much, moreover, to get libertarian ideas a serious hearing in academia—while offering an articulate counterpoint to Rawls’s work noted above.

These were the major philosophical voices of the ‘50s, ‘60s, and ‘70s. All have now passed away. Where are today’s Quines and Wittgensteins—or even its Kuhns and Rortys, or its Nozicks? (To my mind, the younger and feistier libertarian scholars have dropped the ball Nozick threw their way by arguing not for limited government, as Nozick did, but by developing an “anarcho-capitalism” which proposes to abolish government. This notion has failed to catch on for good reason: it is utterly unrealistic.) The youngest American philosophers whose work commands attention and influence are in their 60s and 70s. Bioethicist Peter Singer is 67. Logician and metaphysician Saul Kripke is 73. Others (John Searle, the philosopher of language and philosopher of mind; Alvin Plantinga, the philosopher of religion) are in their 80s.

One reason may be that the younger generations are too busy trying to survive to become first rate philosophers. Let’s probe how that came about.

After the second world war, colleges and universities grew as never before. Numerous fields developed dozens of new Ph.D.-granting graduate programs producing Ph.D.s to staff growing academic departments. The expansion continued on into the 1960s; then, in the early 1970s, it abruptly ceased. As a result, what had been a good job market collapsed.

The number of Ph.D.s turned out by graduate programs did not slow down, however. If anything, it continued to grow on into the 1980s and beyond. Dozens of new Ph.D.s were forced to go into other occupations. Doubtless, a lot of talent was lost.

Those who hung on by their fingernails faced a buyers market that discouraged risk-taking. Extreme intellectual specialization and following the latest fashions became the safest bet. Few younger philosophers were willing to take genuine chances.

A second reason for the relative absence of major philosophical voices in younger generations is the changing technology that began with the miniaturization revolution in the late 1970s and only accelerated, eventually giving us the Internet and other features of today’s vastly different technological landscape. It takes a reasonably intelligent person to be attracted to philosophy in the first place. Such a person, trained in formal logic and understanding the basic structure of reasoning (e.g.), soon realizes that his or her skills are readily transferable to computer science, programming, and a range of imminently practical disciplines and occupations. Many potentially good philosophers never finished doctoral programs. I personal know some who took note of the discouraging job market and dropped out. They saw other, better opportunities and took them. Again, talent was probably lost.

The corporatized structure of the university, emphasizing the bottom line over quality, hasn’t helped. Over the past 20 years, universities have come to rely more and more heavily on “adjuncts” and paying them starvation wages—the academic equivalent of sweatshop labor. For younger generations, this dubious reward for persevering in a field they may have spent as much as eight years training for is hardly conducive to deep or serious thinking. Most of us philosophize better when we aren’t worried about where our next meal is coming from.

Likewise with materialism, as leading philosopher of mind Thomas Nagel found out. His latest book Mind and Cosmos (2012), which argues against materialism, was savaged by negative reviewers and on blogs. Campuses are arguably more polarized both ideologically and in terms of basic philosophical beliefs than ever before, as microcosms of Western civilization itself. We have definitely seen a reduction in the number of topics and perspectives able to be openly pursued, especially in the English-speaking world. In their place are well-entrenched dogmas.

Given this situation, it seems to this writer manifestly obvious: philosophy has a job to do. If this job does not get done—by someone—civilization is intellectually, morally, and spiritually adrift. It might get done by preachers, politicians, or other demagogues. In that case, civilization will continue to drift into polarized camps of increasing mutual hostility until the result is total dysfunction. Arguably we aren’t far from that state of affairs now.

What, then, is the job philosophers are uniquely suited for?

Identifying, clarifying to whatever extent possible, and critically evaluating worldviews—as they are embodied in institutions and cultural practices, or make themselves manifest in current events or how these events are presented to the public by major media (including social media).

Philosophers are in a perfect position to state whether a given worldview is helping or harming civilization, and what it means to say this. A prevailing worldview—dominant in that its adherents hold positions of authority or command respect in their communities or in the broader government—may be impacting different groups in different ways. Perhaps the prevailing worldview is impacting on different groups in different ways. Perhaps our prevailing materialism is working to the advantage of a privileged elite while harming nearly everyone else.

Philosophers are trained to spot unstated assumptions, ad hominem attacks, diversionary techniques, and other dishonest forms of communication. They have the best potential to criticize a worldview and even argue that it should be replaced.

This, however, creates an added dilemma. Philosophy so conceived will probably no more be welcomed in present-day academia than are criticisms of policy shibboleths like affirmative action or more basic worldview commitments like materialism. The ideological bureaucrats will not be amused. Neither will the Neil deGrasse Tysons of the world—or even those who thrashed Thomas Nagel for his book. Whether a crew of new and assertive voices can carry forth this kind of mission courageously in the face of what is bound to be adversity and opposition, including from many of their elders, remains to be seen.

Having been there, I cannot encourage them to pursue academic careers.

Maybe worldview critics can teach online, or use online sources of private funding to decrease their worries over buying next week’s groceries. This would be more effective than trying to win the lottery, logical arguments against which are obvious. Time will tell.

The author has a Ph.D. in philosophy and taught the subject in Southernern universities for a number of years but without finding a tenure-track job. His first book was Civil Wrongs: What Went Wrong With Affirmative Action (ICS Press, 1994). His articles and reviews have appeared in both refereed academic journals and online. In 2012, he moved to Santiago, Chile, where he presently resides. His newest new ebook PHILOSOPHY IS NOT DEAD: A Vision of the Discipline’s Future has just been published by Brush Fire Press International in an Amazon Kindle edition.