  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 Möser, 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 Osnabrück, where he met Möser, who soon became his “fatherly friend”.  It was Möser 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.  