Socrates, who loved Athens, rarely left it, and served with honour in its military, is reported to have said ‘I am not an Athenian or a Greek but a citizen of the universe’. The Nietzscheanism of today takes the opposite position. It rejects the universal on the grounds that some particular category of people may be disadvantaged by failing to measure up. So it has recourse to identity politics and what it calls the ‘celebration of difference’, a hollow phrase to cover the shame of the defeated spirit, for difference has no meaning except as set against a fundamental sameness. Those who find their primary identity in something less than the universal, in a particularity whether of the isolated self or some collective, live in self-conceit: they always want more of themselves and can never get enough of themselves. With this attitude not only do they damage themselves, they undermine the confidence in the universal which is the true foundation of civilized life.