Intellectual Property as Self-Ownership

Sor Juana's fierce defense of her right to study, write, and publish despite ecclesiastical pressure demonstrates that intellectual property originates in self-ownership. Her voluminous works—poetry, theology, drama—were extensions of her consciousness and labor, which she refused to surrender to institutional control. In libertarian justice, this principle holds that individuals own the fruits of their intellectual effort as naturally as they own their bodies. Sor Juana's tradition teaches that freedom of thought cannot be separated from freedom to express and benefit from that thought. Property rights in ideas protect the autonomy of the creator and honor the dignity of human reasoning itself, making intellectual liberty inseparable from economic and personal freedom.