Iván Szelényi's Yale course Foundations of Modern Social Theory turns to Nietzsche as one of the architects of twentieth century critical thought, alongside Freud and Weber. Szelényi opens by framing what these three thinkers share despite their differences: a demand that we subject our own consciousness and assumptions to scrutiny, and a recognition that modern society combines liberation with new forms of repression. He walks through Nietzsche's biography, including his death in 1900 and the decade of illness before it, and addresses how his sister's control of his papers helped produce the false image of Nietzsche as a proto-Nazi. The lecture then works through Nietzsche's major works before settling on On the Genealogy of Morals, tracing his genealogical method and his account of how the concepts of good and bad, and good and evil, developed historically. Chapter markers divide the session into historical context, biography, the major works, and the Genealogy itself.