The right to pursue knowledge and form beliefs independently, central to both Sor Juana's struggle and libertarian resistance to coercive ideological control.
Sor Juana's defiant pursuit of learning despite patriarchal and religious constraints embodies the libertarian principle that no authority—state or church—may coerce conscience or determine what one may study. She refused the demand that women surrender intellectual ambition for obedience, asserting that the freedom to ask questions is inseparable from human dignity. In libertarian justice, this becomes a cornerstone: freedom of conscience protects against both legislation of belief and institutional gatekeeping of knowledge. Sor Juana's legacy shows that property rights mean little without the antecedent right to think freely. Her example vindicates the claim that intellectual liberty precedes and enables all other liberties.
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