Lange, Friedrich Albert (1828-1875)

German historian of philosophy. He is known mainly for his work Geschichte des Materialismus und Kritik seiner Bedeutung in der Gegenwart/History of Materialism and Critique of its Present Significance, 1866. In this, he followed Immanuel Kant's rejection of metaphysics and adoption of a materialistic approach to human knowledge and consciousness.

Lange maintained that contemporary physiological psychology supported Kant's view that the categories according to which we organize our knowledge are entirely a human construct (i.e. not ordained by some higher agency). Later Neo-Kantians, however, rejected this interpretation of Kant's original theory.