Herder develops a number of very important principles both in meta-ethics and in first-order morality. In meta-ethics he argues for a form of sentimentalism, but a form of it that acknowledges a role for cognition in the sentiments involved and which emphasizes their radical variability between periods and cultures. He also invents a “genetic” or “genealogical” method predicated on such variability and applies it to moral values in particular in order to make them better understood. And finally, he develops an ambitious theory and practice of moral pedagogy that rests on his sentimentalism and which accordingly focuses on causal influences on moral character formation, such as role models and literature. In first-order morality he invents an important pluralistic form of cosmopolitanism to replace the more usual but problematic homogenizing cosmopolitanism of the Enlightenment; an influential ideal of individual Bildung, or self-formation; and a distinctive ideal of humanity.