- First name
- Abraham
- Last name
- Heidanus
- Date of Birth
- 1597
- Date of Death
- 1678
- Born in
- Frankenthal
- Died in
- Leiden
Abraham Heidanus was a Dutch Calvinist minister who was sympathetic to Cartesianism. In early 1676, Heidanus was banished from Leiden University because of his hard-lined Cartesianism. Soon after promulgation of the resolution, the Leiden theologian Abraham Heidanus issued (17 April) his counter-arguments in a pamphlet simply called Consideratien (Considerations). His prime focus was to rail loudly and publicly against the senate’s anti-Cartesian resolution by essentially pointing to what he saw as the unlawfulness and the falseness of the decree. Eventually, Heidanus, the combative veteran of academic rationalist Cartesianism became the main victim of the Leiden quarrels himself. On May 5, 1676, the Leiden curators and Burgomaster deprived him of his theology chair for his Cartesian sympathies and his open, subversive attack of the senate’s decree (cf. Molhuysen, Bronnen, vol. 3, pp. 324–7).
Cornelis Bontekoe's preface to Arnold Geulincx's Ethica was dedicated to Heidanus.