[MD] Hume's Fork

[Matt Kundert]

Hey Steve,

Steve said:
I found it interesting to learn that Thomas Jefferson originally wrote, 
“we hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable,” but Benjamin 
Franklin favored substituting the verbiage "self-evident." Walter 
Isaacson, in his biography of Franklin, explained how Franklin 
arrived at “self-evident.” Franklin was inspired by the scientific 
determinism of Isaac Newton and the analytic empiricism of David 
Hume, a close friend of Franklin.

Matt:
I'm curious as to Isaacson's relationship to scholarly work on the 
subject (like, what he says about on-going debates about who said 
what, etc.).  Still one of the best works of intellectual history on the 
Declaration is Garry Wills's Inventing America (1978), particularly 
as it situates in the philosophical milieu (particularly Scottish: Hume, 
Smith, Reid, Ferguson, Hutcheson).  I have no real relationship with 
the scholarship, but here's what Wills says on this particular topic 
(237-8):

"Jefferson's view of natural rights was in accord with Scottish 
thinking, and one change he made in his text helped make that 
clearer.  He first wrote 'We hold these truths to be sacred and 
undeniable.'  The 'sacred' was admissble--he kept it in the conclusion, 
when he spoke of sacred honor' as involved in the defense of such 
truths.  Hutcheson called natural rights 'sacred.'  But 'undeniable' was 
unfortunate--the perverse can deny anything, as Reid emphasized by 
saying that even 'self-evident' truths demand good faith (candor) in 
the hearer and distinct exposition in the speaker.  Jefferson repaired 
the phrase, weak by Reid's norms, with Reid's phrase--'self-evident.'"

In a footnote to that passage, he says, "The change to 'self-evident' 
has, in the past, been attributed to Franklin (Becker, 142).  But there 
is no external evidence for this, and the handwriting argument is 
inconclusive at best.  'Self-evident' is in the text, 'as originally 
reported,' which Jefferson reprints in his Autobiography for pointed 
contrast with the congressional document."  The reference to Becker 
is to Carl L. Becker's also still excellent (if even older, 1922) The 
Declaration of Independence.  Becker and Wills's books, I think, are 
still indispensible when approaching the specifically philosophical 
milieu, though much good work has been done since (JGA Pocock's 
The Machiavellian Moment is outrageously indispensible for the wider 
philosophical milieu, and Bernard Bailyn and Gordon S. Woods's 
books on that time period are still classics on the wider, general 
milieu).

At any rate, the inflection on your question changes once the 
scholastic question is answered: Franklin-influence would go the 
direction Isaacson offers, but loner-Jefferson, as Wills's comment on 
"sacred" suggests, wouldn't.  Under Wills's reconstruction, Jefferson 
cared more about the rhetorical/dialectical impact of his verbage, 
though drawn from a philosophical tradition, than the philosophical 
underpinnings of the concept.  Isaacson is suggesting philosophical 
considerations, Wills is suggesting rhetorical (Jay Fliegelman's 
Declaring Independence, and its reconstruction of the "elocutionary 
movement" in transatlantic English thought, does much to support 
this direction).  The difference, I take it, is that Wills's Jefferson 
wouldn't care whether "self-evident" is analytic or synthetic, 
essentialistic or not: which ends up making the concept more 
non-essentialistic, insofar as it aufgehoben's that debate.

Steve said:
I think what it is saying is that they are true because they are part 
of our own very Nature as human beings. If one does not have the 
rights to life, liberty, and property one is not really human. In other 
words, to kill, to enslave, or to steal from someone is to treat them 
as less than human and to do so is also to be less than human.

The anti-essentialism of pragmatism undermines this justification 
for rights, not that we can't articulate other ways of defending them.

Matt:
I'm not sure antiessentialism does undermine that particular 
justification: all you need is to eliminate your first sentence, and 
just go with everything after "If one does not have ...."  That 
moves you towards an idea of a "human rights culture," which 
would be like just the latest thing thrown up by History, rather 
than some indelible link to our having evolved out of monkeys.

If one emphasizes the analytic/synthetic distinction, a pragmatist 
will be drawn into a lot of awkward moments.  But even here, all 
need not be lost: if self-evidence is assimilated to analytic "by 
definition," you can again just recall Rorty's notion of ethnos--it is 
just the definition of being "one of us," part of our human rights 
culture, that you don't kill or enslave or steal.  If someone 
presses you for why that's analytic as opposed to synthetic 
("didn't you 'look out' at the culture you grew up in?"), then 
you're in philosophical trouble, if not cultural-rhetorical trouble.

Matt