 A final area in which Herder has noteworthy achievements is the philosophy of religion. It seems appropriate to begin discussion of this with a couple of qualifications, though. In Herder’s day German philosophy was still deeply committed to a sort of game of trying to reconcile the insights of the Enlightenment, especially those of modern natural science, with religion, and indeed more specifically with Christianity. Leibniz, Kant, Hegel, Schleiermacher, and many others played this game—each proposing some new reconciliation or other. Herder was part of this game as well. This was not a good game for philosophers to be playing. But it was not until the nineteenth century that German philosophy found the courage to cut the Gordian knot and turn from apologetics for religion and Christianity to thoroughgoing criticism of them (the prime examples being Marx and Nietzsche). This situation imposes certain limits on the value of Herder’s philosophy of religion (as on that of the other reconciling philosophers just mentioned).