Tra progresso e decadenza. L’età industriale nell’analisi di Friedrich Albert Lange

Friedrich Albert Lange's philosophy is primarily motivated by an attempt to understand the role of the nineteenth century in the universal history of mankind. He saw his own century as torn between the progressive ideals inherited from the eighteenth century and the scientific, social and economic changes unleashed by the Industrial Revolution. This paper attempts to reconstruct Lange's ambivalent assessment of his own era, which he saw as oscillating between great progress towards the ideal of humanity and the danger of falling into egoism and cultural decline.