Rights as Human Agreement, Not Divine Grant

Sor Juana's implicit argument in her life and work is that intellectual rights, freedom from arbitrary authority, and equal dignity must be claimed and defended by humans themselves—not granted by ecclesiastical permission. This represents a radical reframing of rights: from divinely ordained status to human social construction. For secular identity, this means taking full responsibility for defending and extending rights. There is no higher authority to appeal to, no ultimate justice to trust in. Rights emerge from human consensus about what enables flourishing, from rational argument about dignity and equality, and from collective commitment to protecting one another. This framework is simultaneously more demanding and more empowering than religious accounts of rights. It demands that secular people actively construct and defend moral frameworks rather than inheriting them. Yet it also empowers them to imagine new possibilities, to extend rights to groups historically excluded, and to ground ethics in demonstrable human need rather than scriptural interpretation. For atheist and secular individuals, this view of rights as human agreements clarifies that moral progress depends on us, not on providence.