Conscience as Inviolable Property

Sor Juana's conflict with ecclesiastical authorities centered on her insistence that her conscience—her thoughts, doubts, and interpretations—remained her own even when she took religious vows. She resisted pressures to silence her theological inquiries, asserting that forced intellectual compliance violated her deepest autonomy. This aligns with libertarian property theory: if I own myself, I own my thoughts. Her framework treats conscience not as a privilege granted by institutions but as an inalienable property right. When authorities attempted to suppress her writings and compel her intellectual submission, she recognized this as a violation equivalent to theft or coercion. Sor Juana's stand anticipates modern libertarian defenses of freedom of conscience: belief systems, doubts, and intellectual positions belong to individuals, not to states, churches, or collective bodies that might claim authority over them.