The author argues that such teleological attributions do indeed apply to living things, including human beings, and that this sheds substantial light on what living things are. It also reveals the existence of objective, species-relative norms in nature -- standards of a certain kinds of goodness or badness inherent in the natures of living things. A large part of the work is devoted to arguing for an account of natural teleology that is both biologically responsible and sensitive to a number of distinctively philosophical concerns. This account makes a unique contribution to the literature in the philosophy of biology by incorporating a detailed concern with evolutionary cause history without embracing the overly reductionistic tendencie