In Byron Willston’s essay, Epistemic Virtue and the Ecological Crisis, Williston goes into Joel Kovel’s ideas of what it takes to get ahead in a capitalist society: “To succeed in the marketplace and to rise to the top, one needs a hard, cold, calculating mentality, the ability to sell oneself, and a hefty dose of the will to power. None of these traits is at all correlated with ecological sensibility or caring, and all are induced by the same force field that shapes investment decisions.” (Kovel, quoted in Williston, p. 250;252). Kovel’s ideal businessman is one that is always looking for self-serving deeds, and one’s traits are epistemic vices. The person must be willfully ignorant, arrogant, reckless, and timid when it comes to economic
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Where this may be true for some people, Kovel is stereotyping the businessman. What their job is does not define their beliefs, thus they can still care about the environment, regardless of their employer. It also depends on what their job is, as I view Kovel’s term of market place to be the economy, and how one would make their income. There are many movie stars like Leonardo DiCaprio who has a net worth of $425 million, would be considered successful (The Richest, n.d.). Based off economic value and by Kovel’s description, “To succeed in the marketplace and to rise to the top” (Kovel, quoted in Williston, p. 250), DiCaprio seems to be at the top of his field, as according to ranking website, Rankers, DiCaprio is number ten for The Best Actor in Film History. Then, according to Kovel, DiCaprio should be cold and calculating and not care about the environment. Yet, DiCaprio has raised millions of dollars though his foundation to protect biodiversity, conserving ocean and to reduce climate change. Therefore, Kovel’s description is false about DiCaprio, as well as many other environmental celebrities like Brad Pitt, Mark Ruffalo and James Cameron (Rankers, n.d.). Kovel also connects the words ecological sensibility and caring, meaning that one has to choose between being successful or being ecological
Where this may be true for some people, Kovel is stereotyping the businessman. What their job is does not define their beliefs, thus they can still care about the environment, regardless of their employer. It also depends on what their job is, as I view Kovel’s term of market place to be the economy, and how one would make their income. There are many movie stars like Leonardo DiCaprio who has a net worth of $425 million, would be considered successful (The Richest, n.d.). Based off economic value and by Kovel’s description, “To succeed in the marketplace and to rise to the top” (Kovel, quoted in Williston, p. 250), DiCaprio seems to be at the top of his field, as according to ranking website, Rankers, DiCaprio is number ten for The Best Actor in Film History. Then, according to Kovel, DiCaprio should be cold and calculating and not care about the environment. Yet, DiCaprio has raised millions of dollars though his foundation to protect biodiversity, conserving ocean and to reduce climate change. Therefore, Kovel’s description is false about DiCaprio, as well as many other environmental celebrities like Brad Pitt, Mark Ruffalo and James Cameron (Rankers, n.d.). Kovel also connects the words ecological sensibility and caring, meaning that one has to choose between being successful or being ecological