Foundations of Modern Social Theory: A Free Yale Course


Taught by pro­fes­sor Iván Szelényi, this Yale course “pro­vides an overview of major works of social thought from the begin­ning of the mod­ern era through the 1920s. Atten­tion is paid to social and intel­lec­tu­al con­texts, con­cep­tu­al frame­works and meth­ods, and con­tri­bu­tions to con­tem­po­rary social analy­sis.” And the writ­ers cov­ered “include Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Mon­tesquieu, Adam Smith, Marx, Weber, and Durkheim.”

The 25 lec­tures can be found on YouTube and iTunes (in audio and video). A com­plete syl­labus can be found be on this Yale web site.

Foun­da­tions of Mod­ern Social The­o­ry has been added to our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

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Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.