So, finally All Things Bright is going to start getting a little more intellectual, a little more academic, a little more philosophical.

I’ve been thinking about dissertation topics.

It’s strange, a few months ago I was really worried because I had no idea about what to write about. Now I have all sorts of weird & wonderful ideas. I want to do something that is relevant to an area inside my life, outside of Philosophy of Religion directly. Chris (one of my lecturers) inspired me when he was talking about how we should read outside the discipline (as well as inside it). That’s when the first idea struck, I just thought, of course, it’s so simple! I doubt they would authorise it though, far too eclectic.

Here are a few, I would dearly love to hear your thoughts about these, so please do let me know!

• Ethics: Evangelism Versus Marketing
• Feminist Philosophy of Religion
• Suffering & God

Oh, okay, that’s not a very helpful list really, is it? No detail. Well, okay, I’ll explore the first idea.

In essence, it feeds on Seth Godin’s article, “Is it possible to hold a marketer morally responsible?”, which I commented on in my previous post, Ethics, or Why I’m back at uni to study MA Ethics & Philosophy of Religion. I realised that both evangelism and marketing are attempts to convince people to buy or buy in to something.

Guy Kawaski’s previous job brings these twin fields of evangelism and marketing together, as he puts it, “I evangelized Macintosh to software and hardware“. See? It’s not just some craziness that exists in my head, this is a real world example!

The essay would be in two parts: A smaller chunk linking evangelism and marketing and a larger chunk discussing the ethical considerations of each, how discussions and conclusions about one affect the other & such the like.

So, what do you think??? Just leave a comment or two. Thanks!

PS I’ve just written a review of the excellent book, Don’t Take It Personally! by Elayne Savage. You could win a free copy of the book, by commenting to that post - I’ll choose the most deserving commentor.