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"We hold these truths to be self-evident..."

The statement is explicitly performative. It is a statement of belief, not fact.



The truth of the statements is presupposed (“these truths”). It’s only the self-evidence of their truth that’s asserted. There’s no component of the statement that’s performative in Austin’s sense (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Performative_utterance). For example, a statement of the form “A holds B to be C” is clearly truth evaluable, and so doesn’t qualify as performative.




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