Consent and Epistemic Coercion

Sor Juana was pressured by Church authorities to renounce her intellectual pursuits and take vows of silence on matters of theology and science. She resisted this epistemic coercion—the attempt to control what she could think, study, and express—as a violation of her freedom. In Libertarian justice, consent requires genuine agency over one's own mind and voice. When institutions demand intellectual conformity or silence, they coerce individuals into non-voluntary states. Sor Juana's tradition teaches that epistemic coercion is as grave as economic coercion: both strip individuals of self-determination. Freedom requires not only the absence of physical force but also the right to form, hold, and express one's own ideas. Libertarian justice cannot exist where people are forced into intellectual compliance. Sor Juana's refusal to be silenced modeled how defending thought-freedom is defending all freedom.