Books, Arts & Manners: Our Secret Vice

Egalitarian Envy: The Political Foundations of Social Justice, by Gonzalo Fernández de la Mora, translated by Antonio T. de Nicolás (Paragon House, 208 pp., $21.95)

“Human kind has reacted toward envy with more ignorance and concealment than toward sex,” says Gonzalo Fernandez de la Mora. One of the seven deadly sins, it’s hardly mentioned any more, even though sacred and secular literature gives us such archetypes as Cain and Iago, haters of the superior. It’s the most shameful and least satisfying of vices: “One may admit to pride, avarice, lust, anger, gluttony, and laziness, and one may even boast of them. There is only one capital sin no one admits to: envy. … Its symbol ought to be a mask.”

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Joseph Sobran

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Egalitarian Envy: The Political Foundations of Social Justice, by Gonzalo Fernández de la Mora, translated by Antonio T. de Nicolás (Paragon House, 208 pp., $21.95)

“Human kind has reacted toward envy with more ignorance and concealment than toward sex,” says Gonzalo Fernandez de la Mora. One of the seven deadly sins, it’s hardly mentioned any more, even though sacred and secular literature gives us such archetypes as Cain and Iago, haters of the superior. It’s the most shameful and least satisfying of vices: “One may admit to pride, avarice, lust, anger, gluttony, and laziness, and one may even boast of them. There is only one capital sin no one admits to: envy. … Its symbol ought to be a mask.”