Herman Philipse (D Phil (Leiden) 1983) took up a 'University Professorship' (distinguished professorship) in philosophy at the University of Utrecht, The Netherlands, in September 2003. He was previously Professor of Philosophy at the University of Leiden (1985-2003), Assistant Professor in Philosophy at that university (1978-85), and Research Assistant at the Husserl Archives, University of
Louvain, Belgium (1977-78). He has been chairman ('decaan') of the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Leiden several times.

As a student, he read law at the University of Leiden, The Netherlands (Master's 1973), and studied philosophy at the universities of Leiden (Master's cum laude Leiden 1974), Oxford, Paris IV (2 year grant by the French State), and Cologne (DAAD grant for one year). He obtained his doctorate in philosophy at the University of Leiden (Husserl's fundering van de logica, 1983) and is the author of Heidegger's Philosophy of Being. A Critical Interpretation (Princeton University Press, 1998), of books in Dutch, such as Atheïstisch Manifest/De onredelijkheid van religie (Bert Bakker, 2004), and of numerous philosophical articles, such as 'The Absolute Network Theory of Language' (Inquiry 33, 1990: 127-178), 'Towards a Postmodern Conception of Metaphysic's (Metaphilosophy 25, 1994: 1-44), 'Transcendental Idealism' (The Cambridge Companion to Husserl, 1995: 239-322); 'A Defence of Empiricism' (Ratio XIII, 2000: 239-255 and Ratio XIV, 2001: 33-55); 'Heideggers philosophisch-religiöse Strategie' (Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung 57, 2003: 571-588); 'The Phenomenological Movement' (The Cambridge History of Philosophy 1870-1945, 2003:
477-496); and 'Overcoming Epistemology' (The Oxford Handbook of Continental Philosophy, 2007: 334-378). In 2007 he published a critical analysis of the textualist doctrine of interpretation defended by Justice Antonin Scalia of the U.S. Supreme Court: 'Antonin Scalia's Textualism in Philosophy, Theology, and Judicial Interpretation of the Constitution', Utrecht Law Review 3, 2: 1-24, and in February 2012 Oxford University Press published his book God in the Age of Science? A Critique of Religious Reason (205.000 words; paperback edition 2014).

Apart from his scholarly writings, Herman Philipse published a great number of articles on philosophy in Dutch for a wider audience. From 2003 onwards until 2017, he also published each year a series of lectures in Dutch on Compact Disk or download on various philosophical topics.