What Did Stephen Hawking Think About Death?

Few people have lived as long under the shadow of death as Stephen Hawking, who was told at twenty-one that he had only a couple of years to live and went on to live another fifty-five. Unsurprisingly, he thought about mortality with unusual clarity, and his conclusions were calm, unsentimental and characteristic.

Not afraid, but in no hurry

In a much-quoted 2011 interview, Hawking summed up his attitude: he had lived with the prospect of an early death for decades, he was not afraid of it, but he was in no hurry to die, because there was still so much he wanted to do first. That balance, an acceptance of death without any rush toward it, defined his outlook. The early diagnosis, far from paralysing him, had sharpened his appreciation of the life he did have.

No afterlife

Consistent with his view that there is no God, Hawking did not believe in any life after death. He once described the brain as a computer that simply stops working when its components fail, with no heaven or afterlife waiting for it, calling such beliefs a comforting story for people afraid of the dark. It was a stark image, but for Hawking it was not a bleak one: it was precisely because there is no second life that this one matters so much.

Death as a spur to living

The most striking thing about Hawking's view of death is how it fuelled rather than dimmed his life. Believing there was nothing afterward made the time he had more precious, not less, and his decades-long awareness of mortality drove the urgency and productivity of his work. His reflections here connect closely to his thoughts on the meaning of life: with no eternity to fall back on, the task is to do what you can, value those you love, and keep looking outward, while there is still time.