Quite so. In context, ‘self-evident’ is a carefully-worded assertion—‘we hold these truths’ hovers between the domains of belief and knowledge—but it was an assertion in Locke’s model of the commonwealth, too. And as much as Locke is often read as a cool theoretician, the Two Treatises were political rhetoric in their time—or even before their time, since it’s now believed that they circulated as Exclusion tracts.

I agree that there’s a ‘Newtonian’ strain, indebted to writers such as Bolingbroke. But my reading certainly carries ‘self-evident’ through to ‘the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it…’

Interestingly, part of the reason the House of Stuart (or Steward, as they were originally) were there in the first place is that, three hundred-odd years before that, in 1320, supporters of Robert I had written this:

…divine providence, his right of succession according to our laws and customs which we shall maintain to the death, and the due consent and assent of us all have made [Robert] our Prince and King. To him, as to the man by whom salvation has been wrought unto our people, we are bound both by law and by his merits that our freedom may be still maintained, and by him, come what may, we mean to stand.

Yet if he should give up what he has begun, and agree to make us or our kingdom subject to the King of England or the English, we should exert ourselves at once to drive him out as our enemy and a subverter of his own rights and ours, and make some other man who was well able to defend us our King; for, as long as but a hundred of us remain alive, never will we on any conditions be brought under English rule. It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honours that we are fighting, but for freedom—for that alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself.

(emphasis added)

That said, Jefferson and others adhered to the Social Contract theory, within which a government is indeed formed by the joint consent of the people who will be governed by it, rather than (as in the historical case of the Norman Conquest) imposed by a victorious military conqueror upon those he defeated.

I’d point you to Robert Anton Wilson’s famed true/false questionnaire (in The Fringes of Reason), which illustrates that sometimes we use “true” to mean physically true, or historically true, and sometimes to mean consistent with the rules of a particular game such as Baseball or Jeffersonian Democracy.

It is self-evident that the ball has not been successfully thrown if it hits the ground before passing the man with the bat. Unless you’re playing Cricket.

I don’t know how complete this is by the standerds of philosophy today but don’t think it is- but then again it wasn’t written for Rawls to read but Washington.

Furthermore when the text says “these ends” isn’t it referring to Brian’s short list and not all of the “that” statements.

We hold these truths to be self-evident:

(1) 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. —

(2) That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, —

(3) That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

If Jefferson simply wanted to make two additional assertions about the insitution of government and the right of revolution, but exclude them from the claim of self-evidence, he could have easily done so by dropping the two “that”s.

Of course it is hard to believe that any of the four claims listed are truly self-evident in the strongest sense – that their truth can be seen non-inferentially or axiomatically, by anyone who understands them, as first principles of reason.

My guess is that Jefferson, writing in the natural law tradition, believes in something like synderesis, the natural capacity to grasp and know the fundamental principles of human conduct, and that his conception of self-evidence derives from this notion. To say that a principle is self-evident, on this interpretation, would not mean that it’s truth is evident to anyone who grasps its meaning. Instead it may mean only that it is ultimately knowable by any human being using his natural intellectual powers and reasoning rightly. That would separate these principles from other truths that are only known to those who have had certain experiences, or received certain revelations or authoritative testimony, or acquired certain specialized skills through education. Since knowing the principles does not depend on these external contingencies, by which some human beings differ from others, there is some sense in which they supply their own evidence.

Aristotle draws a distinction between the truths that are best known “to us” and those that are best known “in themselves”. The distinction seems a bit obscure – isn’t all knowledge a relation between a knowing mind and something else? – but the idea is that the philosopher comes to know the first principles of any science only after a long process that starts with experience, and works toward the first priciples by something like a combination of knowledge and induction. But even though the path to knowledge begins with experience, and requires much ratiocination to reach its goal, once the principles are fully grasped and understood, their truth finally becomes evident “through themselves”. Perhaps Jefferson’s usage is a descendant of this earlier one.

Of course, the Declaration is a highly polemical and controversial manifesto, written with a pressing political purpose in the heat of a gathering emergency. Jefferson may have simply wanted to claim a sort of obviousness for his principles, and be overreaching for rhetorical effect.