Herbart criticizes the alleged empty formalism of Kantian ethics. His aim is to individuate a moral principle or better some moral principles whose validity is universal; at the same time these principles have to preserve the concreteness: They are formal but not abstract and not empty. To sum up, Herbart proposes a formalism which includes some rapports, typical of human actions and the emphasis has to fall on the term rapport, relation. This is one of the more interesting aspects of Herbart’s moral theory. Keywords: moral, values, formalism, relations.