The Right to Pursue Knowledge

Sor Juana's central conviction was that the pursuit of knowledge is a fundamental human right and dignity. She defended women's right to study, to question, to know. Extending this principle to animals acknowledges their own forms of knowledge-seeking and curiosity. Animals explore their environments, learn from experience, teach offspring, solve problems, and demonstrate agency in understanding their worlds. Moral consideration for animals means protecting their capacity to engage with their own lives knowingly rather than reducing them to passive objects of human use. This concept opposes systems that confine animals purely for exploitation, denying them the enrichment and engagement that allow them to pursue their own forms of understanding and flourishing. Sor Juana's defense of intellectual freedom becomes a defense of animal agency and the right to meaningful engagement with existence.