Why Study Philosophy If It’s Already Dead?

The American writer Joyce Carol Oates offers her ‘Followers’ (on X) the words in the screenshot below. They seem to be a variation on Stephen Hawking’s often-quoted “philosophy is dead” mantra.

Why did Stephen Hawking believe that philosophy is dead?

He did so mainly because he believed that “philosophers haven’t kept up with physics”. The following is the passage in full:

“Traditionally these are questions for philosophy, but philosophy is dead. Philosophy has not kept up with modern developments in science, particularly physics. Scientists have become the bearers of the torch of discovery in our quest for knowledge.”

For a start. Philosophy isn’t just about “our quest for knowledge”. (If by “knowledge” Hawking meant data, facts, evidence, tests, experiments, “empirical theories”, etc.) Philosophers are just as likely to ask the following question: “What is knowledge?” In other words, philosophers are just as likely to ask questions about knowledge than offer an endless array of (to quote Leo Tolstoy) scraps of knowledge.