The Authority of Personal Experience and Observation

Sor Juana grounded her knowledge claims in observation, experiment, and direct engagement with texts and ideas. She resisted authorities who demanded acceptance of dogma over evidence and reasoning. In libertarian justice, this principle protects individuals from being told their own experience is invalid or that they must accept others' interpretations of reality against their own observation. This is a freedom and property right: your sensory experience and rational assessment of it belong to you. Institutions that monopolize interpretation—declaring that only approved experts can know truth, that ordinary people's observations are unreliable, that consensus replaces individual judgment—are violating epistemic property rights. Sor Juana's defense of her right to read, observe, reason, and conclude establishes that this autonomy is foundational to freedom. In libertarian justice, the ability to think for yourself based on your own evidence and reasoning cannot be delegated to authorities. This protects both intellectual integrity and resistance to propaganda, manipulation, and the erasure of inconvenient truths.