Although Herder is not usually known as a political philosopher, he in fact developed what is perhaps the most important political philosophy of his age. In domestic politics he was a liberal, a democrat, and an egalitarian; in international politics the champion of a distinctive pluralistic form of cosmopolitanism that sharply rejected imperialism, colonialism, slavery, and all other forms of exploitation of one people by another. Spanning both domains, while he enthusiastically shared the substantive goals of supporters of human rights he also developed a subtle critique of the concept itself, replacing it with his own concept of humanity. His political philosophy is theoretically minimalist and is all the stronger for being so.