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I have some basic critiques of Marx and Nietzsche. I'm saying either of these thinkers belongs in the dumpsters, but are some glaring issues.
First, with Marx. His underlying assumption is that history has patterns--okay, that's a reasonable assumption. However the problem is this leads him to an assumption of historical determinism. If there is one incontrovertible axiom, one inevitability, it's randomness. History is, in many ways, a series of unpredicted events. Marx sees the past and assumes it was always inevitable, but that's not the case. A leads to B is only how things appear to function. It might work with smaller things, but the broader you apply, the more probability is skewed: A leads to B becomes A could lead to B, C, D, E, F and so on, the problem is, the less controls on the environment, the less we can have access to the probability. A casino is an extremely controlled environment, so they can shift out, for instance, dice on a particular cycle, to restore the shape for in order to keep maximum knowledge of the probability. Dealing with culture and society is much, much harder, you can barely even grasp probability, let alone setting it down as definite, let alone pinning down a sure outcome. To me, this is Marx's greatest flaw, his dialectical train of thought presumes you can just predict the future with surety based on the past.
Now, addressing Nietzsche: Nietzsche does not actually make an argument through either inductive or deductive reasoning, or even "dialectic", he just uses rhetoric. Some will mentions he was a competent philologist, but Nietzsche, at least in his philosophical writings, does not employ any rigorous philological method. This is not innately bad, since Nietzsche's intent was to write a philosophical work of music, so to speak, as opposed to an argument. His work is intended purely as an artistic exercise. But it becomes a problem when his readers use him as an authority for anything, when he is cited as an authority for how society,religion, morality, culture, psychology, or history works, then it is a problem. Because Nietzsche's work does not offer anything in the way of an academic understanding of this. It's like citing Shakespeare's historical plays in discussions about Caesar or Henry V.
Anyway, that's all.
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If you believe historical materialism is deterministic and "presumes to predict the future" you haven't understood it.
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>>8470793
That's what I gathered from The German Ideology. He's purely descriptive of the communist future, and places it matter-of-factually alongside the other stages.
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>>8470777
>It's like citing Shakespeare's historical plays in discussions about Caesar or Henry V
I could see one getting away with this, as long as they don't use his historical plays as evidence, moreso to compare reality with fiction.
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>>8470839
But that's never how Nietzsche is treated when cited as an authority, he's cited as an authority of reality, not fiction
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>>8470777
In regards to Nietzsche just because he isn't a systematic writer does not mean there is no system. There are plenty of arguments contained within his work but what it is that he seeks to do is not helped by something like a tractatus. He didn't become one of the most influential philosophers of the continent for just making assertions. Using Nietzsche's texts we can define not only his position but also provide the reasons he has for holding his position. However a purely intellectual understanding of his thought is not what he intended to achieve which is why he opted for his unique style using aphorisms.
Just a quick example as to why Nietzsche can be difficult to interpret. The Genealogy of Morals was written after the disappointing reception of Beyond Good and Evil. So he took a single central theme from BGE and wrote a much simpler book about just that, however in doing so he intentionally distorts his actual position to make it easier to understand. This is why you can find aphorisms contained with tGoM which can sharply contradict his other writings.
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>>8471003
>There are plenty of arguments contained within his work
No, there aren't. It's just rhetoric.
>He didn't become one of the most influential philosophers of the continent for just making assertions.
No, he became one of the most influence by making very, very, very, very "outside the box" assertion (but not very much, since his assertions were common for his Zeitgeist, or else they wouldn't also have been discussed in Dostoevsky), and for being in all likelihood, the most beautiful of all philosophers in terms of writing.
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