Three aspects of superiority, from the essay Tradition and Modernity in Contemporary Practice by Lucien Steil, deserve critical defiance ad infinitum. Of the three aspects, two are overt: the superiority of tradition over the contemporary (or the apotheosis of history), and the superiority of aesthetics over content (or the converse of the tenets of architecture); the covert aspect is the individual’s superiority over the collective (or the malediction of utopia). The author finds the reasons for the superiority of tradition over contemporaneity in the juxtaposition of the post-Modern past to the Modernist past. Furthermore, those reasons are also derived from his thesis on the primacy of the past over the present, emphasising present passatism over presence. He supports the superiority of aesthetics over content by citing the classical tenets of architecture such as beauty, comfort and permanence, rather than citing modern architectural tenets such as functionality, rationality and modern building techniques. He underpins the individual’s superiority over the collective by the juxtaposition of two distinguishably secular historical positions: radical liberalism and the latent fear of utopia, and furthermore uses the first to soften the latter.