17 Jul 2026
Since moving to LMU last fall, Sebastian Bender has been exploring one of the most transformative periods in the history of ideas: the intellectual groundshifts of the early modern era.
Is fire an active force that heats an oven? For Aristotelian philosophers of the Middle Ages and the late Scholastic period, this was a natural way of explaining causation: Natural objects were understood as active agents endowed with "substantial forms" and "causal powers" that enabled them to exert an effect. "With the rise of modern science in the seventeenth century, the Aristotelian worldview came under fundamental criticism," says Professor Sebastian Bender. Innovations such as the microscope and the telescope, together with the emergence of Newtonian mechanics, paved the way to completely new insights and deductions that also profoundly influenced the philosophy of the day.
Against this backdrop, Bender is fascinated by the philosophical debates of seventeenth-century thinkers such as René Descartes, Nicolas Malebranche, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Anne Conway, Baruch Spinoza, Catherine Trotter Cockburn, David Hume and even Immanuel Kant. His research focuses in particular on how these philosophers understood causal relationships. Many of these thinkers, Bender argues, rejected the Aristotelian model in favor of a mechanistic conception of nature that dispensed with mysterious forms and hidden causal powers. "The central objection to Aristotelian philosophy in the seventeenth century was that it posited entities that could not be observed and were therefore inaccessible to empirical science."
Professor Sebastian Bender
© LMU/LC ProductionsYet despite adamantly rejecting the then-traditional worldview, many philosophers continued to assume that causation required something to act or exercise a causal effect. According to Bender, this perspective gave rise to strange theories. One example is occasionalism, the view that there is no longer any causation in nature itself because the entities that are supposedly acting cannot be observed and therefore do not exist. God alone, the theory went, was responsible for bringing about events in the world. Other philosophers proposed that nature itself must somehow be animate. "From the perspective of a modern worldview, these ideas can, at first glance, seem difficult to reconcile with contemporary scientific thinking," Bender says.
As a result, nothing much changed in the conceptual framework of seventeenth-century philosophy. "Although philosophers abandoned many traditional ontological assumptions about the nature of the universe, their conceptual vocabulary evolved much more slowly. The transition to modern philosophy was a gradual process."
Bender draws on multiple philosophers to put these developments in context. This approach, he explains, allows us to reconstruct the philosophical discourse as it actually unfolded—through personal correspondence as well as published works.
Today, scholars increasingly recognize that seeing the big picture of early modern philosophy requires studying several proponents of different traditions rather than concentrating on only one or two canonical figures. Doing so reveals similarities and differences that might otherwise remain unnoticed.
Another major focus of Bender's research into early modern philosophy concerns how moral norms were justified in light of an increasingly scientific worldview. During the Middle Ages, God was generally regarded as the source of morality and normativity. In the seventeenth century, however, philosophers increasingly questioned this assumption, with natural laws replacing divine intervention as the primary explanation of how the world operates.
Although most philosophers of the period were by no means atheists, many argued that morality could not be rooted in God alone but had to originate, at least in part, in human beings themselves. As a result, Bender notes, the question of human autonomy became increasingly important.
Early modern philosophers thus faced the challenge of preserving human freedom to act and moral responsibility in a world increasingly understood through the lens of science. They sought a foundation for morality born of the here and now—a source of normativity that did not depend exclusively on religious preconceptions.
Although philosophers abandoned many traditional ontological assumptions about the nature of the universe, their conceptual vocabulary evolved much more slowly. The transition to modern philosophy was a gradual process.Professor Sebastian Bender
Alongside his research into early modern philosophy, Bender also studies the early works and thinking of Immanuel Kant. While Kant is today best known for his later critical philosophy, Bender investigates the less-studied period during which Kant was still more of a rationalist. Together with LMU Kant scholar Professor Andrew Stephenson, he explores questions such as why Kant initially developed a proof for the existence of God before ultimately abandoning the project.
Yet another area of Bender's research examines the transition from the Scholastic conception of shared human characteristics toward a more individualistic understanding of human nature. He investigates how nominalist ideas gained prominence during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and helped shape modern conceptions of individuality, with particular attention to philosophers such as Leibniz and Spinoza.
Looking ahead, Bender plans to devote more attention to the political implications of early modern philosophy. He is especially interested in the relationship between metaphysics and political philosophy—a connection that has received relatively little scholarly attention. In addition, he contributes to contemporary debates on the theory of causality, while also fostering dialogue across different areas of philosophy. His principal collaborators at LMU include Professor Andrew Stephenson, Professor Peter Adamson, Professor Christof Rapp, Professor Laura Valentini and Professor Christian List.
"Interdisciplinarity has become a major issue in academia," Bender says. At the same time, he notes that we sometimes overlook the importance of collaboration within our own disciplines—meaningful exchange with colleagues working in related areas, knowing what others are doing and identifying areas that overlap. His own research, for example, naturally intersects with political philosophy and decision theory—fields represented at LMU by Laura Valentini and Christian List.
Before his move to LMU, Sebastian Bender taught at the University of Göttingen. He earned his doctorate at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and has held research appointments at institutions such as Yale University. He is also an Associate Researcher at the Human Abilities Centre for Advanced Studies in the Humanities and a member of the New Voices Center on Women in the History of Philosophy.