The Right to Self-Education and Autodidacticism

Sor Juana had no formal university education—impossible for a woman in seventeenth-century Mexico—yet she became one of the most learned figures of her era through relentless self-teaching: reading voraciously, studying languages, engaging philosophers through borrowed texts and correspondence. She claimed and demonstrated that learning did not require institutional permission. In Libertarian justice, the right to self-education is foundational: no one can rightfully monopolize knowledge through credential systems, restrict access to learning, or deny authority to those who teach themselves. This empowers individuals to escape educational gatekeeping, to learn what they choose, and to become experts in their own interests. Sor Juana's autodidacticism models intellectual freedom as the power to direct your own development, to own your learning, and to resist certification systems designed to exclude.