## 1. Life, Reputation, and Influences



 In the few cases Rehberg has been recognized, his reputation has not
been fairly assessed. He has been described as "next to
Friedrich Gentz, the ablest literary opponent of the French Revolution
in
 Germany".[6]
 But such a tribute does not do him full
justice, for the comparison should really be to the advantage of
Rehberg, who was politically wiser and philosophically deeper than
Gentz. To some scholars, Rehberg has seemed a pale German imitation
of Edmund Burke, whose *Reflections on the Revolution in
France* became extremely popular in Germany in the early
 1790s.[7]
 It has been indeed customary to stress the
indebtedness of the Hannoverians to Burke, as if they were all his
mere
 epigones.[8]
 Here again, though, Rehberg has been done
an injustice. He wrote his critique of the Revolution before Burke,
and it is superior to Burke's in its philosophical content. Although
Rehberg's writing has none of the rhetoric of Burke's, it makes up for
its lack of style with greater substance. Unlike Burke, Rehberg
realized that it was pointless to indulge in diatribe, no matter how
flashy or brilliant, and that what was needed amid the passion and
partisanship of revolutionary politics was sober and solid argument.



 Rehberg's early articles on the French Revolution, which were
published in the *Allgemeine Literatur Zeitung*, the most
prominent journal of the day, quickly won him a national reputation.
In the early 1790s, when pro-revolutionary sentiment swept through
Germany, Rehberg stood out as an articulate spokesman for the
conservative cause. He seemed to show that a case could be made for
conservatism, that it was intellectually respectable to honor the
historical traditions of the old German states. Apart from the
immediate effect of his early articles, Rehberg's critique of the
Revolution had a more lasting influence, and in two basic respects.
First, by criticizing the abstract idealism of the radicals, and by
stressing the importance of historical continuity for social and
political stability, Rehberg made himself an important figure in the
development of historicism. Second, as the close friend of Karl von
Stein, the leader of the Prussian Reform movement, Rehberg's thinking
had a direct effect on the politics of his age. Though Stein and
Rehberg later fell out, Stein always acknowledged his great debts to
 Rehberg.[9] 



 Rehberg was born in 1757 into a middle class Protestant family. His
father was a secretary for the estates of Calenberg, one of the
duchies of Hannover. Although Rehberg aspired to an academic career,
he was foiled in his ambitions. A plan to get him a teaching post at
the Berlin *Ritterakademie* was thwarted by no less than
Frederick the Great, who turned him down on the grounds that royal
practice was to hire only cooks from Hannover. After a humiliating
four years teaching German to Englishmen, he became in 1783 the
secretary to the Duke of York, who was then bishop of Osnabruck.
So impressed was the Duke with Rehberg's abilities that he made him in
1786 a secretary to the Hannoverian *Geheime Ratskollegium* (the
secret counsel). The *Ratskollegium* consisted in aristocrats,
though its affairs were usually conducted by bourgeois secretaries
like Rehberg, who were denied any vote. It was one of the tragedies
of Rehberg's career that his onerous duties gave him little time for
philosophy. Hence his writings are scattered and occasional, and
sometimes lack precision and polish. For the same reason, he never
gave a systematic exposition of his philosophy. 



 It was a striking curiosity of Rehberg's cultural milieu that his
father was a close friend of Johann Adolf Schlegel, the father of
August Wilhelm and Friedrich Schlegel, two founding spirits of
Romanticism. The families would often meet, and so the little Rehberg
would often romp with the Schlegel kids. As it happened, Rehberg's
younger sister Caroline became the first love of Friedrich Schlegel,
who immortalized her as Luise in his *Lucinde.* During one of
the family outings, Caroline sketched a drawing of the young Friedrich
Schlegel, which now introduces the critical edition of his
 works.[10]
 If the Rehbergs inspired the Schlegels, the
Schlegels did little for Rehberg. Known for his dry, sober and
puritanical temperament, Rehberg distrusted the self-indulgence and
libertinism of Romanticism. He always kept his critical distance from
Romanticism when it spread throughout Germany in the early 1800s. The
best indicator of his attitude toward Romanticism is his review of
some of Adam Muller's writings, in which he deplored their
mysticism and
 obscurantanism.[11] 



 Rehberg's early interests were in philosophy and literature rather
than politics. Intellectually precocious, he learned to read Greek,
Latin, Italian, Spanish, French and English before he was fifteen.
From 1774 to 1777 he attended the University of Gottingen, then
one of the main centers of intellectual life in Germany. Finding
little inspiration from the *Popularphilosophie* then prevalent
in Gottingen, Rehberg resolved to educate himself, and did so by
studying Leibniz and Spinoza on his own. One hallmark of Rehberg's
intellectual character--central for his philosophy and politics--was
his skepticism, which he formed in his earliest years. When he was
only fourteen, he had doubts about Christianity, and soon became an
unbeliever, which he remained for the rest of his life. His
skepticism soon extended to metaphysics itself. He had his doubts
about Leibniz and Spinoza, because their systems rested upon
questionable and indemonstrable first principles. In 1779 he wrote an
essay for a competition organized by the Berlin Academy, where he took
a skeptical position regarding metaphysics in
 general.[12]

Although he argued that Leibniz's system was the best defense against
Spinozism and skepticism, he also strongly suggested that it was by no
means an adequate defense. The only reason he defended Leibniz, he
later confessed, is that the Berlin Academy was dominated by
Leibnizians, who would never have awarded a prize critical of their
 founder.[13]
 His real convictions were that Spinoza's
system is the epitome of abstract thinking, though it suffers from
irresolvable problems that demonstrate the inadequacies of all
 metaphysics.[14]




 Three philosophers had a formative influence on Rehberg's
intellectual development. He greatly admired Hume, a favourite author
among Hannoverian circles, for his
 skepticism.[15]
 It was
from Hume that Rehberg most probably learned how skepticism could
serve the cause of political conservatism. Another crucial influence
was Justus Moser, so-called *advocatus patriae*, famed
defender of the *Kleinstaat* and seminal influence on
historicism. When Rehberg did his apprenticeship as an Hannoverian
bureaucrat, he was sent to Osnabruck, where he met Moser,
who soon became his "fatherly friend". It was Moser
who taught him to appreciate the traditions and workings of the
*Kleinstaat*, "the basic principles of [German] civil
society as they prevailed before the French
 Revolution".[16]
 Last but not least, Rehberg's
skepticism was greatly abetted and strengthened by his study of Kant.
Although his skepticism was already ripening in the late 1770s, before
the publication of the first *Kritik*, Kant greatly assisted
Rehberg in formulating his own
 skepticism.[17]
 He fully
endorsed Kant's critique of rationalist metaphysics, accepted his
account of the limits of human knowledge, and greatly admired his
moral philosophy. However, for reasons we shall soon see, he took
issue with Kant's attempt to extend his moral philosophy into the
political world. 


## 2. Early Philosophy



 The basis of Rehberg's critique of the Revolution was his early
philosophical views, which he developed from the late 1770s to the
early 1790s. It has been a mistake of traditional scholarship on
Rehberg that it attempts to compartimentalize his thought, separating
his philosophical and political
 thinking.[18]
 No one would
have been more astonished by such an artificial separation than
Rehberg himself, who, in his retrospective account of his writings in
the introduction to his *Sammtliche Schriften*, stressed the
centrality of his general philosophical principles. Apart from their
importance for his politics, Rehberg's early philosophical views
deserve attention in their own right. Rehberg staked out a unique and
original position amid the controversies of his age. 



 Like so many intellectuals who came of age in the 1780s, the young
Rehberg's intellectual landscape was formed by the pantheism
controversy. This controversy began in 1785 when Friedrich Heinrich
Jacobi proclaimed in his *Briefe uber die Lehre von Spinoza*
to a stunned public that Lessing had been a Spinozist. Jacobi used
this juicy bit of gossip to make a provocative philosophical point:
that all rational enquiry, of which Lessing was such a eminent
exemplar, ends in the atheism and fatalism of Spinozism. The only way
to save oneself from such atheism and fatalism, Jacobi suggested, was
to take a "*salto* *mortale*", a leap of faith
in a personal God and freedom. Hence Jacobi presented his
contemporaries with a dilemma: either a rational atheism and
a-moralism or an irrational theism and morality. There could be no
comfortable middle path: rational demonstrations of the essential
beliefs of morality and religion. Jacobi's dilemma was a profound
challenge to the German Enlightenment or *Aufklarung*, whose
ultimate article of faith was that there must be some rational
foundation for our moral and religious beliefs. The effect of
Jacobi's book on the German intellectual stage was like "a
bombshell". Within the next year, Kant, Fichte, Herder,
Reinhold and Mendelssohn would write responses to it. Virtually every
young romantic--Friedrich Schlegel, Novalis, Holderlin and
Schleiermacher--would take a stand in the ensuing debate.



 The young Rehberg too was drawn into the vortex of the pantheism
controversy. Although his skepticism began in the late 1770s, he
formulated much of his philosophy in response to the issues it raised.
His contribution to the controversy were his reviews of Jacobi and
Herder in the *Allgemeine Literatur Zeitung*, and his 1787
tract *Uber das Verhaltnis der Metaphysik zu der
 Religion*.[19]
 In these writings Rehberg continues to
develop his skepticism, which now became his settled position. In
this task he was greatly assisted by his close study of Kant's
critical philosophy. Rehberg agreed with some of Kant's central
critical teachings: that pure reason cannot know anything without the
aid of sense experience, and that it is impossible for the senses to
know anything beyond appearances. He found Kant's critique of
dogmatic metaphysics compelling, and even defended Kant against
Eberhard and the old dogmatic
 Wolffians.[20]
 He rejected,
however, Kant's solution to the pantheism controversy: the concept of
practical faith, the defense of religious belief on the basis of
practical reason. While Rehberg agreed with Kant that the only
justification of religion is
 practical,[21]
 he could not
accept that a practical justification has its basis in reason alone.
The only practical justification of religion was political: its
utility in maintaining order among the people. A more educated man,
however, did not need religious faith to love virtue and do his duty.
Rehberg affirmed an austere stoic ethic, which demanded acting on duty
alone, regardless of personal happiness. Like many of his
contemporaries, he held that the doctrine of moral faith violated
Kant's own strictures about the autonomy of morals. The moral law
demands acting for the sake of duty alone, regardless of supernatural
rewards and punishments. 



 Throughout the pantheism controversy, Rehberg maintained his
skeptical attitude toward all religious belief. Such skepticism was
unique, his original contribution to the controversy. All his fellow
disputants-- Kant, Herder, Jacobi, Mendelssohn, Goethe, Novalis,
Schleiermacher, Holderlin--affirmed some kind of religion,
whether theism or pantheism. Although Rehberg agreed with Jacobi that
all metaphysics ends in Spinozism, he did not take this as proof for
pantheism, still less as reason for a *salto mortale* into
theism. Since he rejected all metaphysics as empty speculation, he
did not think that reason obliges us to accept pantheism, let alone
theism. Metaphysics could never justify theism, Rehberg argued,
because it at best establishes that there is a first cause of things,
but never that this first cause is a personal being with understanding
and
 will.[22]
 Although we can attribute understanding and
will to God, we have to realize that such attributes are only
anthropomorphisms that are true for us and never for
 things-in-themselves.[23]
 When his friend J.J. Engel later
asked him "Do you want to reduce all religion down to
poetry?", Rehberg did not demur; his only qualification was that
poetry sometimes has a moral
 worth.[24]




 Already in *Uber das Verhaltnis*, published two
years before the Revolution, some of Rehberg's conservative views make
a brief appearance. His skepticism was beginning to bear political
results. It is dangerous, he argues, to assume that reason is the
basis for civil administration, because it leads to unwarranted
expectations. The everyday administration of the state often rests on
*ad hoc* or arbitrary decisions, and it is impossible to expect
all of them to be based on some rational standard. Since conflict
between people is inevitable, even in a purely rational constitution
some things have to be decided on the basis of force 
 alone.[25]
 Rehberg was also convinced of the necessity of elite rule, of the
need for someone to make judgements about what is in the best interest
of everyone. What is in the best interests of a state is a matter of
specialized knowledge, which is not the concern of every
 man.[26]




 After participating in the pantheism controversy, Rehberg made his
mark in other philosophical controversies of his day. In the early
1790s he wrote several reviews for the *Allgemeine Literatur
Zeitung* of Karl Leonhard Reinhold's *Elementarphilosophie,*which had been at the centre stage of the new debates surrounding
Kant's critical
 philosophy.[27]
 Reinhold's
*Elementarphilosophie* was a radical form of foundationalism,
whose basic aim was to derive all the results of Kant's philosophy
from a single self-evident first principle. The crucial question for
Reinhold's contemporaries concerned the very possibility of such
foundationalism. Is it possible to found all knowledge upon a single
first principle? Given Rehberg's skepticism, it should not be
surprising that he took a negative stand on this basic question. In
his January 1791 review of Reinhold's *Beytrage zur
Berichtigung bisheriger Missverstandnisse der Philosophen*,
the chief exposition of the *Elementarphilosophie*, Rehberg
sketched his misgivings about foundationalism. It is striking that
his chief objections are strictly Kantian, coming straight out of the
*Kritik der reinen Vernunft* itself. Rehberg implies that
Reinhold is guilty of ignoring Kant's own strictures about the limits
of knowledge; it is as if he were insinuating that Reinhold would
better have heeded Kant's advice to limit himself to popularizing the
critical philosophy. The problem with Reinhold's philosophy, Rehberg
argues, is that it begins with definitions, ignoring Kant's warnings
that definitions should end rather than begin philosophy. Reinhold
neglected Kant's teaching that there is a fundamental difference in
kind between the methods of mathematics and those of philosophy.
While mathematical definitions can construct their objects in
intuition, philosophical definitions have no such advantages. What we
derive from a definition depends on how we interpret it, on what we
read into it in the first place; and there are all kinds of
interpretations of the same definition, so no basis of unanimity
should be expected simply by beginning with a definition, no matter
how simple and unproblematic. The chief theme of Rehberg's
review--and indeed the *leitmotif* of all his political
thought-- is contained in his remark that "a definition need not
contain a criterion of that which falls under it" (202).
Rehberg develops this remark so that it becomes an objection against
any attempt to apply general principles of philosophy to the practical
world (205-6). To apply a general first principle, it is necessary to
have a criterion to show the subordinate principles to which it
applies; but there are no such criteria, because how we apply a
principle is a matter of judgment, which, as Kant demonstrated, has no
 criteria.[28]
 As one might suspect, Rehberg's argument here
is politically motivated, because he singles out Reinhold as one of
those philosophers who think that his first principles are guidelines
for the social and political world (204). The general conclusion of
Rehberg's reasoning could not be more expressly political:
"...the whole system of education and culture of man that should
be based on scientific insight is false in theory and impossible in
execution." (205).



 In the rest of his reviews, Rehberg doggedly pursued Reinhold's
argument throughout the *Beytrage*, showing precisely
how his principles are insufficient to derive even the most basic
results of Kant's philosophy. We cannot begin to reconstruct here the
details of his
 arguments.[29]
 Suffice it to say that
Rehberg's reviews made an impact on his contemporaries, not least
Reinhold himself, who fell into a fit of depression after reading
 them.[30]
 Rehberg's articles had made a great contribution
toward skepticism about foundationalism, which would soon have a
profound impact on the development of Romanticism. 



 The net result of Rehberg's participation in the philosophical
controversies of the late 1780s and early 1790s was a deeper
skepticism. There were two basic themes behind his skepticism.
First, his adoption of Kant's critical thesis that we cannot know
things-in-themselves, and that all knowledge is limited to
appearances. Second, Rehberg's insistence that, even within the realm
of appearances, there is a fundamental chasm between the universal and
particular, between what we think and what we sense. There were in
turn two aspects behind this latter dualism: that the universal
concepts of *theoretical* reason cannot sufficiently explain or
describe something particular; and that there is no criterion by which
to apply the universal principles of *practical* reason to
ordinary life. It was this latter aspect of the second theme, which
was essentially an argument in behalf of the necessity of judgment to
solve the basic problems of politics, that was decisive for Rehberg's
political philosophy. 


## 3. Political Convictions



 Rehberg formed his political convictions early, long before the
Revolution. Like all the Hannoverians, the inspiration for his
politics came from the British
 constitution.[31]

Hannoverian admiration for the British constitution is not surprising,
given that Britian had long standing dynastic relations with the House
of Hannover. But there were other sources for this admiration, all of
them, ironically, perfectly French. Rehberg and the Hannoverians had
read their Voltaire, Montesquieu and Jean Louis De Lolme, who had all
praised the English constitution, making it their model for modern
government and their antidote to absolutism. Like their French
forbears, the Hannoverians admired the British constitution for its
mixture of modern freedom and ancient institutions. The British had
preserved their monarchy, their aristocracy and the ancient role of
Parliament as a representative institution; but they had also
liberalized these institutions by granting toleration, freedom of
speech, and the right of commoners to hold office and participate in
government. The great strength of the British constitution, in the
Hannoverian view, is that it served as a bulwark against the two chief
dangers of the modern political world: radical democracy and monarchic
absolutism. The British constitution wisely limited the franchise to
the aristocracy and wealthy bourgeoisie, which saved their system from
ochlocracy; but it also ensured that the king had to govern with the
co-operation of parliament. Contrary to Montesquieu and De Lolme,
however, the Hannoverians did not see the balance of power, the system
of checks and balances, as the reason for the success of the British
system; they found it instead in the British party system, which
they admired for two grounds: it organized politicans into effective
groups in behalf of the public good, and it avoided corruption and
complacency through
 opposition.[32]




 Although Rehberg's conservative views were formed before the
Revolution, his early reaction to events in France was not hostile.
He was sympathetic to the moderate French reformers in the National
Assembly, and he was hostile to royalists who insisted that France
return to the days of absolute rule. Unlike Burke, he refused to
whitewash the *ancien regime*, and he fully recognized
that, before the Revolution, France had been in desperate need of
social and political reform. Its taxes fell heavily on the poor, its
aristocrats had undeserved privileges, and its monarchs had ruled by
whim. Like all the Hannoverians, Rehberg's great hope was that France
would evolve toward something like the British constitution, that it
would become something like a Parliament along the Seine. He knew
that France and Britian were very different societies, having
different languages, traditions and values, and that it was impossible
for one country to adopt wholesale the constitution of another.
Nevertheless, he still hoped that the Estates General could become
*something* *like* the British parliament. If only
French aristocrats could be more like their British cousins, and if
only Louis XVI could be persuaded to limits his powers like George
III. When, however, it became clear that the Constituent Assembly was
bent on more radical democratic and egalitarian changes, Rehberg's
sympathy transformed into antipathy. His opposition became resolute,
even passionate, when he saw that the French were ready to import
these radical changes into Germany. 



 Despite his implacable hostility to radical democracy and
egalitarianism, Rehberg's general stance toward the Revolution, as
that of the Hannoverians in general, is best described as reform
conservatism. Its task was to walk the fine middle path between
revolution and reaction. Rehberg disapproved of the reactionaries in
Germany no less than the revolutionaries in France. He realized that
the expectations aroused by the Revolution made it impossible to
return to the old authoritarian ways.[33]

The only means to preserve the old order against revolutionary ferment
was through timely reforms. Reform from above should placate and
dampen the revolutionary demands coming from below. The best way
forward, he believed, was for the German *Kleinstaat* to evolve
in the direction of the English Parliament. The estates should become
again what they had been in the medieval past: representative bodies
that could check the power of kings and serve the interests of the
public. Given Rehberg's mistrust of democracy and egalitarianism, it
is perhaps going too far to describe his reform program as "one
of constitutional advance under the disguise of antiquarian
 claims".[34]
 Nevertheless, when we consider his
liberal values and contempt for reactionaries, it is necessary to
admit that there is some measure of truth to this description. 



 Although Rehberg and the Hannoverians were eager to uphold the
traditional order against the radical currents of the Revolution, it
is also important to be clear about just what kind of order they
wanted to preserve. They were sharply critical of the *ancien
regime* of Friedrich II's Prussia and of Louis XVI's France.
They feared and condemned the despotic power of absolute monarchs,
which they saw as threats to the traditional liberties of the
estates. Their sympathies were for the pluralistic structure of the
old *Kleinstaat*, where each locality or province had its
traditional laws and customs, and where the estates gave some degree
of representation. The Hannoverians saw the constitution of their own
Electorate as the norm for the German *Kleinstaat.* In the late
eighteenth century the Electorate of Hannover still had a thriving
aristocracy, a pliable peasantry, and a still nascent middle class.
The government was still in the hands of the *Stande,* i.e.,
governing committees representing clergy, town and landed interests.
If these could only be reformed along the lines of the British
Parliament, Rehberg believed, German states would not have to fear the
excesses of absolutism or radical democracy. 



 The core of Rehberg's reform program came with his ideas about
reforming the *Stande*. In the past the
*Stande* had been dominated by aristocratic cliques who were
concerned chiefly with their own interests rather than the public
good. They would quarrel constantly with the princes to preserve
their old privileges. The best positions were held by aristocrats,
who alone had voting rights. Despite these defects, Rehberg believed
that the *Stande* still had a valuable role to perform in
the modern state, and that it would be a disaster to replace them with
a bureaucracy. Whereas a bureacracy fostered a spirit of obedience
and order, the *Stande* were open to discussion and debate
about the public interest. Its members were not beholden to a
monarch, but the interests of their locality and constituency. If the
*Stande* were to survive in the modern era, they would have
to respond more directly to their constituency, work more
co-operatively with the monarch, and hold regular meetings to discuss
and debate public affairs. Most importantly, they would have to be
accessible to the bougeoisie as well as the aristocracy, so that men of
talent could have the opportunity to rise to the top. Although
Rehberg wanted the *Stande* to be more representative
institutions, he still wanted to limit access to them. He feared
direct representation of people--the slippery slope toward the dreaded
universal franchise-- and advocated representation on the basis of
property. His chief demand for reform is that
*Landstandschaft*--the right to participate and vote in
committees--be extended to anyone who owned land and not simply to the
traditional aristocracy. Hence a bourgeois purchaser of traditional
aristocratic land could now be accepted into the *Stande*.
Such a proposal is very modest and cautious; but it was also intended
only for the near future; for Rehberg also advocated, though for the
more distant future, the participation of the peasantry in the
 estates.[35]




*Prima facie* it is strange to find Rehberg, a burgher whose
talents were thwarted by the aristocracy, to be such an advocate of
its preservation. It seems as if he were a humble and obedient
servant in his politics as well as in his bureacratic work. Yet
aristocracy was fundamental to Rehberg's whole political outlook.
Aristocracy was natural for him, given his insistence that rights and
obligations are inherited, handed down from one generation to another
(see below, section 4). More importantly, aristocracy was his bulwark
against major fears: democracy and egalitarianism. The chief danger
to democracy is that it could lead to ochlocracy, government by the
mob. It was axiomatic for Rehberg that all government had to be
meritocratic, and he could see no way of ensuring this principle in a
radically democratic and equalitarian society. He believed firmly in
the value of a social and political hierarchy, the importance of
maintaining class differences between
 people.[36]
 Class
differences were in his view both desirable and inevitable: desirable,
because they allow merit to rule; and inevitable, because people have
more or less merit or talent according to circumstances, temperament
and birth. 


## 4. Critique of the Revolution



 Rehberg's critique of revolutionary ideology was based upon his
general skepticism toward reason. He worked out his criticisms
gradually and on scattered occasions from 1789 to 1792 in his reviews
for the *Allgemeine Literatur Zeitung.* He later revised and
collected these reviews, publishing them in 1793 under the title
*Untersuchungen uber die Franzosische
 Revolution*.[37]
 This work stands as one of the best
German critiques of the French Revolution. In fundamental respects it
laid the groundwork for German conservatism. Its significance was
immediately recognized by Fichte, who devoted much effort to its
refutation in his *Beitrage zur Berichtigung der Urteile des
Publikums uber die franzosische Revolution*. 



 For Rehberg, the Revolution was a failed experiment in idealism, a
misguided attempt by French radicals to recreate society and state
according to the principles of reason. There lay a fundamental
fallacy behind this experiment: the belief that the principles of
reason are guidelines for concrete political practice, that they are
blueprints to reconstruct all society and the state. It was this
belief, Rehberg argues, that sanctioned the frenzy of destruction
behind the Revolution, the eagerness to abolish all the traditional
political institutions of France. Since the French radicals believed
that the principles of reason mandate a specific kind of constitution,
and since traditional French institutions were very far from that
ideal, they held that these institutions are *contrary to*
reason, so that it was obligatory to abolish them. The chief fallacy
behind revolutionary ideology, therefore, was its
*hyperrationalism*, its belief that reason by itself dictates
political practice. Hence Rehberg made it his chief business to
expose this fallacy. In his many writings on the Revolution he argued
emphatically and repeatedly that reason has no such powers. Although
he accepted that pure reason does determine the general principles of
morality, he denied that it is by itself sufficient to dictate
political
 practice.[38]
 Reason by itself demands only that
our principles are just and universal, applying without exception to
everyone alike; but such principles are indifferent regarding the
specific form of a constitution; they determine nothing about
*which* laws are just and universal in the specific circumstances
of a country. On their own, the general principles of reason are
consistent with monarchy, democracy or aristocracy. Which form of
government is best can be determined by experience alone, by seeing which
laws have the greatest utility under specific circumstances. 



 It was one of Rehberg's central themes that the gap between theory
and practice, between general principle and specific constitution, has
to be bridged by judgment. Judgment is the special faculty and
province of the statesman. Its task is to determine how best to apply
the principles of reason under specific circumstances. It should
never be confused simply with reason, the intellectual power of
determining general rules; for, as Kant taught in the first
 *Kritik*,[39]
 judgment is that faculty that determines
the application of rules and therefore does not stand under any rule
itself. Judgment, however, is no easy task: there are many ways of
applying the same principles; and the consequences of applying them
have to be weighed against one another. Judgment is a faculty that
improves with age and experience, and that sometimes requires
technical expertise. The shortcoming of the French radicals is that
they had underestimated judgment as they had overestimated reason.
They assumed that each principle involves the criterion for its
application, and that it should be applied in just one unique way,
regardless of the circumstances. 



 Recognizing the role of judgment in politics means for Rehberg
that another fundamental tenet of revolutionary ideology collapses:
the principle of the autonomy of reason, i.e., the belief that each
individual alone has the power and right to determine how to act in
the state (15-17). Rousseau and Kant are right to claim that reason is
inalienable, and that each individual is sovereign in having the power
and right to ascertain general moral principles. But this does not
give them, Rehberg argued, the power and right to determine how to
apply these principles in specific circumstances. Since knowing how
to apply these principles is a matter of judgment, and since judgment
depends on experience and expertise, only a few qualified individuals
will be able to determine the best form of a constitution and the laws
of a country. Hence, in these cases, the individual should alienate
his powers of judgment to those who are more qualified. Rehberg's
advocacy of the role of judgment in politics thus became the basis for
his defense of elite rule. 



 A central pillar of Rehberg's conservatism was his defense of
tradition. The basis for that defense was, again, his critique of
reason. Since reason by itself cannot determine the specific form of
a constitution, it never lays down a mandate to abolish the
established institutions of a country, and so it is permissible for
the statesman to follow tradition. Sometimes, Rehberg argued, it is
not only *permissable* but also *obligatory* for the
statesman to respect the traditions and established institutions of a
 country.[40]
 A state is the product of the history of its
people, of the experience of many generations; and each
generation lays down the foundations on which another must build.
What our forefathers built grew out of the unique circumstances of the
country, and it has gradually adapted to them; to abolish it would
leave us nothing to build upon and make it necessary to create *ex
nihilo*. Rehberg's defense of tradition and precedent went even
further: he argued that many of our social and moral obligations are
themselves essentially historical, arising from inheritance. No state
could persist for long, he argued, if future generations did not take
over the obligations of past generations, or if children did not
assume the duties of their parents (52-53). It was therefore a
fundamental rule of civil society that children inherit the duties and
responsibilities of their parents. Rehberg knew that this was a
somewhat harsh doctrine, because it would mean accepting inequalities
from birth and aristocratic privileges; yet he insisted upon it all
the same:

 "Human beings in
civil society must be compelled to honor what their parents promised
and began. No state could exist for long if children and other heirs
were not made to take the place where the deceased once stood. Who
would want to enter into commitments when the uncertain death of one
of the committed parties released them of all obligations?"
(52)



 Given Rehberg's critique of rationalism and his respect for
tradition, his reaction to social contract doctrine should not be
surprising. He condemned it in the sharpest terms. This doctrine not
only assumed that every individual has the power to judge political
affairs, but it also seemed to absolve him from all traditional
responsibilities and obligations. The social contract doctrine
falsely holds, he argued, that we enter society and the state at will,
as if we were born free and had some natural criterion by which to
judge them; but we are born into society and the state, and the
criteria by which we judge things are formed by them. We must give up
the assumption, he insisted, that civil rights belong to people by
nature; ranks and rights are inherited and depend upon the place in
society into which we are born (62).



 Rehberg saw the chief inspiration for French radicalism in the
seductive and paradoxical writings of Jean Jacques Rousseau (6, 21).
It was Rousseau who first advanced the principle of the autonomy of
reason, and who made reason alone the touchstone of political
legitimacy. His doctrine of the general will meant that every
political principle should be tested in the light of reason, or
according to what an ideally rational person would will. Rehberg
found irresolvable ambiguities in Rousseau's doctrine, which, he
claimed, made its application to the political world impossible.
Rousseau's distinction between the general will and the will of all
made it clear that it was not possible to determine the general will
simply by what people happen to want; the general will was understood
by Rousseau to be a norm that determines what everyone ought to will.
But how is it possible to determine what everyone ought to will? And,
more importantly, *who* is to determine it? The ambiguities of
Rosseau's doctrine made it ripe for exploitation by Jacobin
ideologues, who felt justified in "forcing people to be
free".



 Another source of revolutionary ideology that became the special
target of Rehberg's wrath was physiocratic doctrine. Though this
doctrine was often associated with absolutism, Rehberg still saw it as
a basic influence on radical thinking. He especially disliked what he
took to be the physiocrats' leading principle: that everyone should
have the right to do whatever they want as long as they do not
interfere with anyone else. Such a principle laid down the path
toward "a very crude egoism". If this were made the
governing principle of civil society, he argued, then people would
recognize no obligations other than to leave others alone; the whole
culture of social virtue would disappear (25-26). The physiocratic
system also leads to materialism, he believed, because it values
everything according to its utility, its ability to satisfy our basic
needs. People will regard themselves as machines, who work to eat and eat only to work more
(27). Since they show no immediate profit, there will be no point in
developing our higher powers or in cultivating the arts (28).


## 5. Dispute with Kant



 In the late 1780s, before his encounter with Reinhold, Rehberg took
part in some of the heated debates surrounding Kant's critical
philosophy. He was both an admirer and critic of Kant. While he
defended Kant against the polemics of the Wolffians, he also wrote a
critical review of the second *Kritik*, which was widely read in
his
 day.[41]
 But the review of the second *Kritik* was
only the first skirmish of a greater battle. Rehberg realized that
his case against revolutionary ideology could triumph only if he
defeated Kant. For Kant's ethical rationalism gave a strong
philosophical foundation for the doctrines of Rousseau, which had been
such an inspiration for the radicals in France. Some of Kant's basic
concepts--the categorical imperative and moral autonomy-- seemed
*post facto* rationalization for Rousseau's social contract
theory and republicanism. What was only a feeling or intuition in
Rousseau became a concept or principle in Kant. These implications of
Kant's doctrines became explicit in 1793 when Kant published his
famous 'Theory-Practice' essay in the *Berlinische
 Monatsschrift*.[42]
 Here Kant argued that there is no
gap between theory and practice in politics, and that reason is
practical in political as well as moral life. He maintained that the
principles of morality, which are determined by pure reason alone, are
also binding in politics, and that pure reason provides the basis for
a republican constitution involving the principles of liberty,
equality and independence. Kant's theses were a direct challenge to
Rehberg, who had made the gap between theory and practice the
*leitmotif* of his critique of the Revolution. Sooner or later,
then, he would have to reckon with the sage of Konigsberg. His
reply to Kant duly appeared in the *Berlinische*
*Monatsschrift* in February
 1794.[43]




 Rehberg began his essay by expressing his agreement with the basic
principles of Kant's moral philosophy. Unlike many opponents of
Kant's moral theory, Rehberg was not an empiricist in ethics. He
flatly denied that utility could settle matters of
 right,[44]

and he held that the first principles of morality have to be
established independent of experience, apart from any knowledge of the
consequences of acting upon them. It was Kant's great merit, Rehberg
declares, to have shown that the first principle of morality--
'Act so that the maxim of your will becomes a universal
law'--is determinable by pure reason alone. Where Rehberg
disagrees with Kant is in his attempt to establish *specific*
moral and political maxims from the first principle of morality. Like
many later critics of Kant, Rehberg maintains that the categorical
imperative is a purely formal principle, insufficient to determine the
content of our specific duties. The categorical imperative amounts to
nothing more than the general demand that our principles be
universalizable, that they hold for everyone alike without exception,
or that we treat like cases alike (117-118). As such it provides a
merely negative condition for accepting a moral principle; the problem
is that it does not provide a positive criterion to distinguish
between the many maxims that satisfy this condition. The principle is
still compatible with many different maxims, all of which are
universalizable. 



 But why is the categorical imperative such a formal principle? Why
cannot it derive any of our more specific duties? Rehberg's argument
here becomes somewhat blurred and confused. While his intention is to
show that the categorical imperative is a purely formal principle,
some of his arguments tend to demonstrate not its formality but the
impossibility of acting according to it in the real empirical world.
It is one thing to show that the categorical imperative is not
practical because it cannot determine specific duties; it is another
thing to show that it is not practical because no one in the real
world could act according to it, whether it derives specific duties or
not. All told, Rehberg's polemic against Kant is an extraordinary
mixture of insight and confusion. We can best summarize it in the
following points:


* If the categorical imperative is to derive any specific
duties, it must tell us how to act in the empirical world. Yet pure
reason can never determine a priori anything regarding the empirical
world; hence the categorical imperative cannot determine any of our
specific duties. Thus, for Rehberg, the dualism between the a priori
and a posteriori in Kant's philosophy entails that the first principle
of morality must be formal (119-120).
* Yet this argument seems to suppose that because the categorical
imperative cannot derive the content of a principle--how we should act
in specific circumstances--it cannot determine its form--whether it is
obligatory, permissible or forbidden. Kant always recognized,
however, that the particular content of a maxim has to be derived from
experience. All that must be derived a priori is its form. Hence on
this score Rehberg's critique missed its mark.
* Kant is right to hold that the first principle of morality
is that man ought to be treated as an end in himself. However, once
we examine the presuppositions of this principle, it becomes clear
that it is severely limited in its application to the real world.
This principle presupposes that everyone has a physical body that is
their exclusive possession, which they are the sole master of, and
which cannot be used by others as means to their ends. Yet such a
presupposition is rarely, if ever, fulfilled in daily life. To
preserve our bodies, it is sometimes necessary for people to use one
another, to be means for one another's ends (118-119). The Kantian
principle of morality as an end in itself is true only for a nation of
angels, but not for human beings in the real world who depend on one
another to survive.
* In his 'Theory-Practice' Essay Kant attempts to
derive from the categorical imperative the idea of equality before the
law, or what he calls "the principle of equality":
Each member of a state has rights of coercion in relation to
others. This means that everyone should enjoy equal protection
before the law; in other words, if you violate my rights I can
prosecute you as you can prosecute me if I violate your rights.
Rehberg points out, however, that such a principle does not imply the
radical view that everyone has equal rights; it entails only that
everyone's rights must be equally respected, whatever the differences
between them might be. The principle is indeed compatible with the
greatest divergence in the extent and kind of rights (124).
* Kant's principle of freedom -- Everyone can seek
happiness in their own manner as long as they do not interfere with a
similar quest by others -- applies to us only insofar as we are
perfectly free beings who can live in complete independence of one
another. But we are not such beings, because we depend on others
simply to survive. What should these relations of dependence be?
Kant's principles offer no concrete guidance (124).
* All these difficulties with Kant's moral theory show, Rehberg
concluded, that there is a gap between theory and practice, morals and
politics after all. Kant's principles are either too general, so that
they do not determine the specific maxims by which we should live, or
they are too idealistic, incapable of application at all to the real
world. If we are to determine our specific duties in the concrete
world, and if we are to determine the best constitution for our
country, we have no recourse but considerations of utility. We have
to consider the needs of people in specific circumstances to ascertain
which laws and policies are most beneficial. In some cases, however,
even utility does not work, because we will have to decide between
policies where the utility is indeterminable, incommensurable or
equally balanced. In these cases we have no choice but to act
according to convention or tradition (127).[45]


## 6. Rehberg and the Historicist Tradition



 Rehberg's importance for the historicist tradition has long been
appreciated by the few scholars who know him. It is scarcely
recognized, however, among scholars of historicism, who either ignore
him or treat him in a footnote.[46] In his magisterial
*Entstehung des Historismus* Friedrich Meinecke treated Rehberg
*en passant*, as if he were but a disciple of
 Moser.[47]
 This too is an injustice, since Rehberg was
as great an influence on the historicist tradition as Moser
himself. Though Moser was the more original thinker, Rehberg had
a better understanding of its relevance for the post-revolutionary
era. It is surely a telling sign of Rehberg's significance for
historicism that Friedrich Savigny, the founder of the historical
school of law, had praised him repeatedly for his critique of the
*Code Napoleon*, the French attempt to impose a rational
constitution upon the Electorate of
 Hannover.[48]
 Resistance
to the *Code Napoleon* was the first *cause
celebre* of historicism, its first case in its
battle against the legal rationalism of the Enlightenment; and in this
respect Rehberg was Savigny's most weighty precedent. In sum,
Rehberg's chief contribution to historicism was making it the
antithesis to revolutionary ideology. 



 We find in Rehberg some standard historicist tropes before they
became widespread in the nineteenth century. Like Herder and
Moser, he taught that each nation is an organic whole, a unique
individual, which cannot be reduced down to the mere sum of its
members. Each nation has a singular and characteristic spirit
*(Volksgeist)*, which pervades every aspect of its life, and
which persists over the generations. This meant for Rehberg, as later
historicists, that moral and political values are *sui generis*
and incommensurable, so that we should not judge one nation or epoch
by the values of another. Rehberg also shared some of Moser's
skepticism about the natural law tradition, which attempted to
formulate universal values or moral standards above all the changes of
 history.[49]
 He too believed that these values often turned
out to be the product of their own time and place, that they rested
upon illicit generalizations from the values of one culture.



 What was new to Rehberg's historicism was his critique of reason.
His skepticism regarding the practical powers of reason gave
historicism a new firmer foundation, one deeper than that dug by
Moser or Herder. The ultimate upshot of his skepticism, as we
have seen, is that there is a gap between theory and practice, between
reason and conduct, in the realms of morality and politics. Since
reason cannot lay down specific maxims for moral conduct, and since it
cannot determine the specific form of a constitution, it proves to be
a useless guide to moral and political action. What fills the gap
between theory and practice is, for Rehberg, nothing less than
history. There are two senses in which this is the case. First, we
determine the specific maxims of our moral conduct, or the proper
political constitution for a country, only by judging their utility,
by seeing how well they fit into their cultural context, which is the
product of history. Second, we sometimes have to lay aside utility
and determine how to act by precedent and tradition, by learning the
customs of a culture; but precedent, custom and tradition are also
results of history. Both points show, Rehberg believes, that we are
not completely free moral agents who simply choose to become part of a
culture, and who choose principles of action based on pure reason
alone; rather, we are born into our culture, which shapes our very
identity, and which supplies the content for our principles. We
cannot escape our history because it makes us who we are.



 It is necessary to be precise, however, about the exact role played
by history in Rehberg's philosophy. The historical strands of his
thought have often been exaggerated, as if he completely rejected the
natural law tradition and all rationalism in
 politics.[50]

Although he was indeed skeptical about many claims made for natural
law, he never denied its very existence; and although he doubted that
practical reason determines concrete maxims, he never questioned that
it could lay down the most general principles of morality. More
exactly, his position is that natural law and practical reason are
necessary, but not sufficient, for moral and political practice.
History completes reason, but it does not replace it. This residual
rationalism in Rehberg's political thought appears in some of his
later articles on the historical school of
 law.[51]

Reaffirming the Kantian view that there is an a priori dimension of
right, he argued against the doctrine that all laws are nothing more
than arbitrary commands. In this regard, Fichte's critique of Rehberg
is unfair and misses the
 point.[52]
 Rehberg taught not that
historical traditions determine the standard of right, as Fichte
claimed, but only that they determine how it should be applied and
developed in specific circumstances.



 It is also important not to exaggerate Rehberg's traditionalism. His
insistence on the indispenable role of tradition in political life was
one of the characteristic features of his conservatism. It is
important to add, though, that his faith in tradition was not that of
a reactionary. He never went so far as to hold that custom and
tradition are sacred. He admitted, indeed insisted, that we should
change custom and tradition if they become oppressive or inconvenient
in changing
 circumstances.[53]