The Right to Solitude and Intellectual Space

Sor Juana's convent cell was her intellectual sanctuary—a space where she could read, write, and think without the demands of marriage, motherhood, or public service. She defended this solitude fiercely against intrusion and expectation. In Libertarian justice, the right to solitude and privacy is inseparable from freedom itself: one cannot think, create, or determine one's own life without space protected from others' demands and surveillance. This concept grounds property rights not only in tangible goods but in the temporal and spatial conditions necessary for autonomy. It opposes the constant availability demanded of workers, the surveillance justified in the name of security, and the public intrusion into private thought and choice. Sor Juana's tradition suggests that protecting individual liberty requires protecting the material conditions—quiet, privacy, time—in which human beings can exercise reason and create meaning. This concept has applications to contemporary debates about surveillance, work demands, and the right to disconnect.