Abstract

I have chosen a painting for my essay which is by one of Laszlo’s favourite painters, Tivadar Csontváry Kosztka. The painting is Az Öreg Halász and reveals the spiritual conflict that wars within humankind and has been recorded and examined throughout the generations. Csontváry’s Old Fisherman captures the Hungarian spirit of ruggedness against the many painful historical tragedies suffered by the Hungarian people. The essay outlines Laszlo’s work in the field of alternative economics in which he shows how the profit principle has crowded out the intrinsic motivation for action and cultivates a self-centered value orientation in which economic actors become morally disengaged resulting in harm to others. The two faces of the Old Fisherman illustrates the tension between our external and intrinsic motivations and the essay points to Laszlo’s work as a positive and alternative path to Progressive Business.