Charles de Villers

Charles François Dominique de Villers (4 November 1765 – 26 February 1815) was a French philosopher. He was mainly responsible for translating the philosophy of Immanuel Kant into the French language.

Villers was born in Boulay-Moselle, France. He studied at the Benedictine College in Metz, and then became a student of the School of Applied Artillery of Metz. He attained the rank of captain. Like other officers of that era, such as the artillery colonel Armand Marie Jacques de Chastenet of Puysegur, he became interested in animal magnetism.

After the horrors of the French Revolution, Villers moved to Germany and there in Göttingen in 1794 befriended the German intellectual Dorothea von Schlözer and her husband, the Mayor Mattheus Rodde. The Rodde-Schlözer home was a centre for intellectuals across Europe. Dorothea was a pioneering female intellectual, the first woman to gain a doctors degree in Germany. Villers moved in with the Rodde-Schlözers in 1797 and they lived semi publicly as a menage a trois the rest of their lives. Villers' French nationality was able to preserve the household from the worst ravages of the French occupation in 1806. He reported these catastrophic events in his Lettre à Mme la Comtesse de Beauharnais, Fanny, contenant un récit des événements qui se sont passés à Lübeck dans le journées du jeudi 6 novembre 1806 et les suivantes.

In 1811, Villers was appointed Professor of Philosophy at the Georg-August University of Göttingen. In 1814, after the downfall of the Kingdom of Westphalia, he was promptly sacked by the Government of the Kingdom of Hanover.

He died in Göttingen in 1815 aged fiftyone.

Villers was significant as the individual who explained the works of Immanuel Kant to the French-speaking world. He portrayed the revolution in ideas produced by Kant as being as important in its significance as that produced by Descartes, Lavoisier and Copernicus.

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