  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 Sämmtliche 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.  