Against All Gods: Six Polemics on Religion and an Essay on Kindness

摘要

A.C. Grayling is Professor of Philosophy at Birkbeck College, University of London. He has written a number of books including others, like this one, on (or against!) religion. This is an unusual topic for review in a marketing journal but potentially relevant to the currently-resurgent topic of marketing myopia (the special issue of Journal of Marketing Management on the topic and especially the editorial: Wright et al. (2008)). The book has potential relevance for marketing researchers as it implicitly addresses religion or more to-the-point, its alternative (according to Grayson) of "humanism" from a standpoint akin the marketing concept, thus opening up the possibility of applying techniques such as those of market research to the topics. Implicitly echoing the marketing concept, Grayling argues that there is nothing wrong with the pleasures and possessions of the material world; they are what people naturally seek and even need. Supplying pleasures and possessions that people want is, of course, the job of marketers. Grayson espouses the concept of having a good time but is oddly silent on people's spiritual needs and wants. Is it within the remit of qualitative market researchers to identify and satisfy those intangible needs as well as the more tangible ones?