Freedom of Conscience as Property Right

When Sor Juana was pressured to renounce her intellectual pursuits, to cease her studies and conform to expected piety, authorities were attempting to colonize her conscience. She resisted the claim that the Church could own and direct her inner life, her doubts, her questions. Freedom of conscience is property right because thoughts, beliefs, and values constitute the self you own. No one can rightfully confiscate or dictate your conscience without reducing you to servitude. Libertarian justice protects conscience from institutional intrusion: this includes freedom from enforced confession, from mandatory ideological conformity, from surveillance of thought. Sor Juana's letters assert her right to her own beliefs even when the Church demanded submission. She refused to internalize the judgment that her intellectual ambitions were sinful. Protecting property and freedom requires protecting the innermost sanctuary of conscience from claims of institutional authority. Without conscience freedom, all other freedoms become hollow.