3Why bother being good, if you could get away with being bad? What do you do when you believe no one is looking? Can you be happy without being good? These questions go to the heart of one of the most important and troubling problems in our lives: the value of morality. But these problems do not belong solely to our own time, for every thoughtful person from any historical period at any age from child to grandparent feels their force. They are perennial philosophical questions about the very meaning of life. So, it comes as no surprise to discover that the greatest philosophical work ever written, Plato's Republic, engages just these issues. Joining Plato's character Socrates at the beginning of this quest for value in human life, Philosophy of Human Nature follows the trek of the ancients, the Christians, the moderns, and contemporary thinkers as they pursue this quarry.