Abstract

Lange's The History of Materialism (1866) is not only history but a socio-political agenda that argues that the social ills of his context are the consequence of a materialist worldview and that, if violent upheaval is to be avoided, a new worldview must be adopted. The worldview that Lange offers is called the Standpoint of the Ideal. As a modification of Kant's critical philosophy, it asserts that a part of the human constitution is a universal, poetic inclination that underlies experience and acts to synthesize experience into a harmonious unity. This harmonizing principle also has an aesthetic and ethical dimension to it. If we once recognize that the consequences of a materialistic worldview lead to social turmoil and we choose to give due attention to this aspect of our nature, we can not only resolve the metaphysical questions that perpetually bother us but we can also reform society. This thesis argues that, although Lange hoped that the Standpoint of the Ideal would result in 'beneficent reform' thus averting an impending revolution, the adoption of the Standpoint of the Ideal is revolutionary. This conclusion is based on Kuhn's analysis of 'revolutionary' paradigmatic change as outlined in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1970) and uses Collingwood's concept of a 'constellation of absolute presuppositions' as the definition for a social paradigm (An Essay on Metaphysics, 1972). This thesis argues that the 'paradigm' that Lange is critiquing is modernism and that the Standpoint of the Ideal offers an incommensurate paradigm and thus is revolutionary