Self-Evident

Can truth be self-evident?

Readers in the United States of America live in a nation founded on the assumption it can be. “We hold these truths to be self-evident,” says the opening of the Declaration of Independence. A list of self-evident truths follows. Here is a longer quote from the Declaration:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

“Self-evident” means apparent and clear to all, without the matter needing to be proven. A self-evident truth is a foundational axiom of the world as we know it to be—as strong as a girder even if, like a girder, it is hidden from view beneath the rooms and environs built upon it.

If there is no self-evident truth, then this means the only thing evident is evidence. Truth, fact, knowledge—all of this is derived from what we can argue and defend by piecing bits of evidence together.

You might be able to see the problems on each side:

If truth can be self-evident, then this provides cover for self-serving conjectures. A regime, culture, or movement might falsely say: It is self-evident that men know better than women. Or: It is self-evident that certain people are given to be kings and queens and ought to rule other people.

On the other hand, if there is no self-evident truth, then all assertions are in play. To qualify as credible, an assertion only needs a story that accepts and connects some of the evidence. This is the world of witch hunts, pseudoscience, and conspiracy theories.

I will resist using the term “common sense” to talk about self-evident truth, because this term is less illuminating than it appears. When the authors of the Declaration of Independence referred to truths as self-evident, they might just as well have called them common sense. (A famous pamphlet circulating at the time had this title.) But then, many in the new nation would have considered many other things common sense as well, including the view that a person can “own” another person. We hold “sense” in “common” for different reasons, and we are all aware that the nation began with this oppression and violation unresolved.

But here I see the case for self-evident truth.

The rights of man, the dignity of human beings, the prerogatives of people—this was the nature of the self-evident truth the Declaration asserted.

It is hard to argue that these self-evident truths are not true. Who would assert that there is no right to life, liberty, and/or the pursuit of happiness? We differ on what it means in practice to live these truths. But who, other than a monster, would say my right to my life is a self-serving fiction, and that another is free to take it away from me? Who other than a tyrant would assert the same about my liberty? Who would assert the same about my pursuit of my happiness, whether or not I am able to catch it?

The new nation founded on an observance of self-evident truths would inevitably have to reckon with its disregard for a self-evident truth.

This very fact of history offers—I don’t want to say “evidence”—but rather vindication of self-evident truth.

How then can we see self-evident truth, the real truth, and avoid self-serving conjecture?

In the Declaration of Independence, one figure is present at the origin of the listing of self-evident truths. He flies in and out of the text so fast, you might not give him much thought ahead of the long list of grievances of which the Declaration more fully consists. But look again at the quote from the Declaration I set apart above. In this quote, the Creator makes a cameo. Or, more truly, the Creator is seen at the beginning of the argument.

And there is most definitely an argument within these lines. The self-evident truths are not disconnected nor disembodied. This is the essential point. Even in the self-evident truths, there is a line of reasoning. That line begins with, can only begin with, the one truth which, if it is true, can only be perceived via its own self-evidence: the existence of the Creator.

Here is the argument from that passage of the Declaration quoted above. Here is its line of reasoning:

1. The Creator created people.

2. He made them because he values them.

3. Their value can be seen in their lives, their freedom, and their ability to seek and experience something of worth in this world.

4. These things are all inherent to how the Creator made people. They are rights he made and entitled people to possess. The rights are unalienable. If the Creator endowed these rights as part of what makes human beings so valuable, then it is offensive for man—it is wrong; it is evil—to take these rights away.

Seen in this light, we glimpse a distinction. It is this: All truth is self-evident.

For it to be truth, it must be true in this way, via self-evidence. This point itself is a self-evident truth.

Facts are something different. They are important, but different. Facts can be found, and facts can be defended as accurate, by deducing and arguing from evidence. And credible hypotheses and theories can be constructed from facts.

But truth—in the sense of an unyielding axiom through the world, an axis upholding it, a girder—such a thing can only be bigger than the world it helps to buttress. Thus, truth can only be in evidence through the capacity and divinity we have in being able to see beyond the world.

Evidence can mount. Evidence can pile up until the theory explaining it becomes unquestionable, treated as fact, indistinguishable from fact. But then, truth. We do not get to truth through evidence, no matter how high it mounts. Rather, truth gives meaning to the evidence. What the Creator has made self-evident brings us to what we recognize and see.

Can truth be self-evident? Yes, but even more, it must be this. Truth is superstructure. It anchors on a foundation outside of evidence’s reach. The origin of all truth, all self-evident truth, is found in the one true thing.

Photo: detail from the Declaration of Independence. Public domain.