Generally, the whole point of your thesis is to produce an original piece of work. If the piece is not original, then this can go a long way to devaluing the work, although this does not necessarily mean that you have to do piece of work that has never been written about in some form before.
It is entirely possible that you can create a thesis about a topic or theme that has been written about before; however, rather than simply going over the same ideas, your thesis needs to look at the topic from a new angle, as well as potentially introducing new concepts or themes.
Given the enormous range of subjects and topics available, creating an original piece of work which does not overlap in any way with any pre-existing ideas can actually be incredibly difficult. In fact, using other ideas and sources of information to back up your work is a critical part of writing a thesis; therefore, having at least some overlap is advisable, if not necessary. As long as the work has a great degree of originality running through it, this is acceptable.
Trying to think of what to write about for a thesis can be very difficult indeed. Equally, it is not every day that a student needs to write a thesis and, therefore, the need to know exactly what is required from the piece of work can mean researching existing theses that have been written already.
If you wish to use someone else's thesis for inspiration, then this is absolutely fine. As long as you are not copying their work, and only using ideas of how to create your own original piece of work, then there is no harm. If there are any other parts of another thesis that you wish to include within your own work, then potentially you can do this, as long as you cite the thesis as a source of information.
Just as it is important to cite the work of someone else’s thesis - so as to avoid any risks of plagiarism - any other sources that you may use for inspiration or help during your writing process should also be cited. Not only does this negate the risks of plagiarism, but it can help to back up any theories or ideas that you propose, by using pre-existing information to confirm anything that you are writing.
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