Moral Imagination Across Species

Sor Juana was a master of intellectual empathy—she could enter into theological debates, scientific questions, and poetic worlds far removed from her position as a confined nun. This capacity for moral imagination becomes essential for animal ethics. We cannot experience the world as a whale or an octopus experiences it, yet we must imaginatively extend our moral concern across this epistemological gap. This concept draws on Sor Juana's method of rigorous thinking combined with creative insight to develop frameworks for understanding animal experiences. It rejects both the coldness of pure rationalism and the passivity of sentiment, instead cultivating an active intellectual engagement with the inner lives of other species. Through this practice, we acknowledge that our inability to directly access animal consciousness is not an excuse for moral indifference, but a challenge to our intellectual capacities.