Interdependence and Relational Ethics

Despite her isolation in the convent, Sor Juana lived in profound relationship with others—readers, teachers, the divine—and her intellectual life was fundamentally dialogical, built on exchange and connection. This relational philosophy offers rich resources for animal ethics. Humans and animals are not separate beings encountering each other, but fundamentally interdependent creatures sharing ecosystems and often intimate spaces. A dairy cow depends entirely on humans; humans depend on ecosystems that include countless animals. This interdependence is not accidental but constitutive of what we are. Traditional ethics based on rights and duties assumes independent agents encountering each other. A relational ethics, drawn from Sor Juana's dialogical life, recognizes that our very being is woven with animal others. This reframes animal ethics not as a matter of respecting autonomous beings but of honoring relationships already constitutive of our existence. It demands care for those we depend on and who depend on us. Indigenous and feminist philosophies of interdependence align with Sor Juana's understanding of knowledge as relational. Ethics from this perspective requires attending carefully to particular relationships rather than applying universal rules.