Epistemic Justice and Property Rights

Sor Juana faced systematic epistemic injustice: her ideas were dismissed not on merit but because she was a woman and a nun, her authority denied before her words were heard. Libertarian justice requires that epistemic credibility cannot be arbitrarily distributed based on status, identity, or institutional position. When someone's knowledge is systematically discounted, their intellectual property is stolen—not the words themselves, but the value, authority, and market recognition those ideas deserve. Sor Juana's vindication depends on recognizing her as a legitimate intellectual producer whose contributions possess genuine worth. In practice, this means opposing monopolies on credibility held by institutions or privileged groups. It requires that markets of ideas remain open, that reputational capital flows according to actual merit, and that gatekeepers cannot artificially suppress or misattribute knowledge. Epistemic justice protects both the individual's property in their ideas and the broader freedom that comes from a genuine marketplace of thought.