Epistemic Justice and the Right to Be Believed

Sor Juana faced systematic epistemic injustice: her intellectual contributions were dismissed or attributed to male influences, her religious knowledge questioned because of her sex, her voice devalued by institutional gatekeepers. Libertarian justice extends beyond material property to informational and testimonial domains. When institutions systematically discount the testimony or knowledge-claims of entire groups—women, the poor, religious minorities—they restrict freedom by preventing these groups from being heard, believed, and taken seriously. This denial of epistemic standing is a form of control: it keeps people dependent on others' interpretations of reality and their own experience. Sor Juana's assertion of her own authority—her insistence that she could read, interpret, and judge theological questions—was an assertion of epistemic freedom. This concept protects liberty by requiring that credibility be distributed fairly and that institutional gatekeeping of knowledge and truth-claims justify their exclusions rationally. Without epistemic justice, property rights and political freedoms remain fragile.