The distinction between voluntary intellectual assent and coerced compliance, revealing how power structures demand false consent while undermining genuine freedom.
Sor Juana faced relentless institutional pressure to renounce her intellectual ambitions—to consent to limitations on her thinking and writing. But she recognized the difference between genuine consent and coerced obedience masked as acceptance. Church authorities demanded not merely her compliance with rules but her intellectual surrender: they wanted her to believe she should not study, should not question, should not think independently. Libertarian theory must distinguish between voluntary agreement and coerced submission. In property and freedom contexts, this distinction is crucial: a contract signed under threat is not genuine property transfer, and compliance under duress is not consent. Sor Juana's tradition illuminates how sophisticated power operates not through obvious force alone but through making people internalize their own oppression. Applied to libertarian justice, this concept demands skepticism toward claims of consent in unequal power relationships, requires examination of how institutions create pressure to accept unfavorable terms, and insists that genuine freedom requires conditions where people can meaningfully refuse. True property rights and liberty depend on distinguishing authentic consent from manufactured compliance.
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