The house always wins: why philosophy isn’t optional

A prominent strand of criticism of contemporary philosophy comes from high-profile physicists and science communicators. Figures such as Stephen Hawking, Lawrence Krauss and Neil Degrasse Tyson have claimed that philosophy is obsolete, unproductive, and an obstacle to genuine inquiry. Yet all these critiques end up falling into the same trap: they all end up trying to philosophize their way out of doing philosophy. This failure is instructive. It points to the way in which, far from being a relic of an earlier phase of intellectual inquiry we should put aside, philosophy is in fact something we cannot avoid engaging in.