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great philosophers] and go beyond them. It is for these few to raise monuments to the
glory of the human intellect” (1964b, 63). Thus while society and reason have separated
the vast majority of the human race from the peace and freedom they would have enjoyed
in nature, for a few individuals it has allowed them to enjoy freedom on the highest plane.
Be that as it may, reasons’ claims to human perfection retain a dubious distinction within
Rousseau’s philosophy.
The cracks in the wall of reason that appear in modern political philosophy with
the work of Rousseau, are mirrored in IR theory by the work of the social constructivists.
Just as Rousseau 1) examines the foundational claims of Hobbes’ theory and finds that
they rest on unsubstantiated assumptions regarding the state of mind in the state of
nature, 2) thereby problematizes the role of rationality, and 3) is thus able to argue that
life in anarchy can actually be quite nice, so too in IR the social constructivists have 1)
examined the rationality claims underlying Waltz’s theoretical project and found that
they rest upon undefended assertions regarding human awareness of self-and-other in the
state of nature, 2) used this recognition to problematize, and then further theorize about,
the role of reason and objective reality in international relations between states, and
finally 3) through this theorizing crafted an argument suggesting that life in international
anarchy can be rather pleasant.
As with the neoliberal institutionalists, social constructivism does not have a
theoretical founder in the way that Morgenthauian realism or Waltzian neorealism do,
although one could point to Alex Wendt as being social constructivism’s most notable
mainstream theorist. In his Social Theory of International Politics, Wendt lays out the
key premises of this mainstream social constructivist thought. As he notes, “students of
Convention