The practice of interrogating foundational assumptions about human superiority and dominion that underlie both patriarchy and animal exploitation, following Sor Juana's challenge to religious and social order.
Sor Juana lived in a world where hierarchies seemed divinely ordained: God, Man, Woman, Nature. She did not overturn this hierarchy but questioned its foundations and applications. In animal ethics, we similarly inherit hierarchies presented as natural or inevitable—humans above animals, reason above emotion, culture above nature. These frameworks justify domination. Sor Juana's intellectual method involved careful questioning: Is this assumption actually true? Who benefits from believing it? What alternatives might be possible? Applied to animals, this means interrogating the Great Chain of Being that places humans at the apex. It means questioning whether intelligence, speech, or rationality are valid criteria for moral worth, or whether these standards simply reflect human capabilities and interests. Sor Juana never directly challenged Church authority but created conceptual space for doubt. Similarly, questioning sacred hierarchies does not require abandoning all human exceptionalism but rather subjecting it to scrutiny, asking whether dominance over animals truly flows from nature or from human convenience and power.
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