CV – Govert den Hartogh

CV

I studied theology at the Theological University of Kampen (MA 1972), philosophy at the University of Leiden (MA 1973), and spend a year (1973-1974) as a recognized student at the University of Oxford.

From 1974 to 2009 I have been employed by the University of Amsterdam. I began working as a student advisor in what was then the Central Interfaculty (Faculty of Philosophy), and worked from 1976 to 1989 as an assistant professor in that same faculty, section Ethics. During that time I also taught introductory courses in moral and political philosophy in the Subfaculty of Education. I received my PhD in philosophy in 1985 from the University of Amsterdam. My supervisor was Trudy van Asperen.

From 1989 to 1995 I worked as an associate professor in the Faculties of Philosophy and Law, teaching moral, political and legal philosophy, and from 1991 on also as an extraordinary professor of medical ethics in the Faculty of Medicine, on behalf of the Dutch Humanistic Alliance (Socrates-Foundation). From 1995 I held the chair of moral philosophy in what would soon become the Department of Philosophy of the Faculty of the Humanities, together with Frans Jacobs. I retired in 2009.

In 2002 I published “Mutual Expectations: a Conventionalist Theory of Law.” The theory of the relation between ethics and the law that the book provides situates itself in the modern natural law tradition from Grotius to Hume. It can be downloaded from this site.

I spend two sabbathicals as a fellow at the Netherlands Institute of Advanced Studies in Wassenaar, 1987-1988 and 2000-2001. I was a visiting scholar at the Departments of Philosophy of the University of Toronto (1997) and of New York University (2004).

In 1992 I took the initiative of founding the Netherlands School for Research in Practical Philosophy, together with Robert Heeger and Bert Musschenga, and functioned as the school’s first director from 1993-1998. From 2006-2010 I was president of the school’s board. I have been the editor of the Library of Ethics and Applied Philosophy of Kluwer, later Springer from 1997-2008.

In 1995-1996 I participated in the work of the committee which prepared the fusion of the Faculties of Arts, Philosophy and Theology into the new Faculty of Humanities, and I was a member of the board of ASCA from 1997-2005. In 2008 I presided the QANU review committee that assessed most of the degree (MA and BA) programs in philosophy of the Dutch universities.

I served as a member of the Regional Review Committee for Euthanasia and Physician-Assisted Suicide Zuidholland/Zeeland from 1998-2010, and as a member of the Health Council, permanent advisory committee for Health Ethics and Health Law, from 2003-2020. In 2010 I presided the committee that prepared the guideline Euthanasia in case of a lowered consciousness of the Dutch Royal Society of Medicine KNMG. In 2015 I retired as a member of the permanent committee of the Centre for Ethics and Health (CEG).

In 2023 I published What Kind of Death, the Ethics of Determining One’s Own Death. See the page Books for details.

When I retired in 2009, my former PhD students and postdocs published a Liber Amicorum: Peter Rijpkema, Gijs van Donselaar, Bruno Verbeek, Henri Wijsbek (red.), Als vuur. Opstellen voor Govert den Hartogh ter gelegenheid van zijn emeritaat, Den Haag: Boom Juridische uitgevers, 2009.

email-address: g.a.denhartogh@outlook.com