The Declaration and Self-Evident Truths
“We hold these truths to be self-evident …” Herein lies the abiding conviction held by the Founding Fathers that the human mind is capable of knowing the truth about things. What is really true corresponds with what is actually real, so to hold a truth is to grasp its reality. That means, for starters, the American Founders affirmed that truth as a category existed, that it was knowable, and that it was true for all people, in all places, at all times.
The notion of “relative truth” is as oxymoronic as it is self-defeating. If truth is relative, then nothing one says can be absolutely true, including relative truth claims. But to those colonial Founders, truth was a self-evident thing, which the mind could independently recognize and understand.
“Almighty God hath created the mind free,” wrote Jefferson in the opening of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom. Intellectual freedom was unquestionable and undeniable in the minds of the Founders.
Conversely, for its antithesis (relativism), truth is seen as an illusion, a mere subjective conviction or sensation prompted by strictly personal impulses. This view has permeated the American academy for decades, and by extension, a progressive brand of politics. But if “truth” is not absolute, then “truths” are not self-evident. Deconstructing truth as an objective category down to one’s personal opinion (your truth vs. my truth) has made everything negotiable.
For the American Founders, though, this view would be political heresy, because it was clearly “self-evident” that some things in life are non-negotiable – self-evident truths are one of those things. Additionally, if we’re unable to know what is true and false, then we will be unable to distinguish between what is good and bad, right and wrong, just and unjust – exactly where up to 40% of the American electorate find themselves today.
But renowned British thinker G.K. Chesterton observed that “America is the only nation in the world that is founded on a creed,” He’s right. “We hold these truths” has been our civic faith for 250 years.
Moreover, “self-evident” truths have been around longer than that. Self-evident is an ancient term that goes back to Aristotle, who likely took it from earlier Greek logicians.
Thomas Aquinas described self-evident truths as “those that are known as soon as their terms are known,” while Thomas Jefferson emphasized that the intention of the Declaration was “to place before mankind the common sense of the subject,” and to do so in “terms so plain and firm, as to command their assent.”
To Hamilton they were “primary truths” or “first principles,” and contended that they “contain an internal evidence which … commands the assent of the mind.” They are “so obvious in themselves,” he maintained, “and so agreeable to the natural and unsophisticated dictates of commonsense, that they challenge the assent of a sound and unbiased mind, with a degree of force and conviction almost equally irresistible.”
Countering the perspective of a friend who was still loyal to the British King, George Washington argued that Parliament’s Coercive Acts were “a plain and self-evident proof of what they are aiming at” and that Great Britain’s tyrannical objectives were “as clear as the sun in its meridian brightness.”
Note the coherency and continuity of thought, from Aristotle to Aquinas to Jefferson, Hamilton and Washington. They were all on the same page, the page of truth, which to the reasonable and fair mind was eminently self-evident (obvious, knowable, objective and absolute).
As “an expression of the American mind,” this Declaration gave birth to the greatest civilization in the history of mankind. The reason for that should be, well, self-evident. Look at what the people and their leaders were rooted in. Scholars say that 70-80% of the colonies attended church regularly; in fact, coming fresh off the historic Great Awakening, churches were exploding. Look at what united the states then, and what is dividing them now, and it should be, again, self-evident. So should this: “a house divided against itself cannot stand.”
Brian Schroeder is the former Wyoming Superintendent of Public Instruction, an ordained minister and professional family/youth counselor.
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