Intellectual Property as Self-Ownership

Sor Juana's prolific literary and scientific output—despite fierce institutional resistance—demonstrates that intellectual property emerges from the mind's labor and liberty. She argued implicitly through her defense that a woman's ideas are her own possession, sovereign from patriarchal or ecclesiastical claim. In Libertarian justice, this concept anchors property rights in the creative act itself: what you think, write, and discover belongs to you first. Sor Juana's life shows how denial of intellectual ownership strips a person of dignity and freedom. When the Church suppressed her scientific inquiries and demanded she cease writing, they violated her property in her own mind. This framework protects not wealth alone but intellectual autonomy—the right to think, publish, and benefit from one's knowledge without coercive redistribution or censorship.