 In addition to these striking moral ideals, Herder is also committed to a range of much less surprising ones, especially ones associated with the Christian moral tradition, such as sympathy, love, forgiveness, honesty, justice, and equality. Although not surprising in themselves, these ideals help to illustrate another striking feature of his moral philosophy: his firm avoidance of the sort of moral monism that began in antiquity with Plato’s Protagoras (specifically, with its argument for the unity of the virtues) and which has continued in modernity with Kant (in his commitment to the categorical imperative as the sole moral principle) and Utilitarianism (with its commitment to happiness as the sole moral criterion), in favor of moral pluralism, or a commitment to an irreducible plurality of moral values/ideals. This is arguably another great merit of his moral philosophy.