Nadia Ruiz | PhD. Candidate in Philosophy | University of Kansas

In the eleven years I have been a philosophy student only once has Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz appeared in a class syllabus. We read Repuesta a Sor Filotea de la Cruz and discussed her views on women and education. As a young Latinx woman student, I was 19 years old, reading Sor Juana gave me a sense of belonging––little did I know this was going to be the only time a Latinx woman philosopher would appear in one of my classes. Even in feminist theory books her work does not appear. This is very surprising, I mean, Sor Juana was a feminist before feminism.

Because of this, I feel it is important to acknowledge that Sor Juana not only focused on women’s rights to education and questioned the assumption of a connection between gender and intellectual activity––i.e. the idea that only men are producers of knowledge––Sor Juana was a skilled philosopher that spoke on a wide range of topics. For example, Sor Juana wrote a poem about knowledge (Primero Sueño) and engaged in debates regarding God’s nature and aptitudes (Carta Atenagorica) through the use of elegant arguments, which can easily be compared to contemporary philosophical writing.

Since Sor Juana’s work on women’s education (Respuesta a Sor Filotea) and writings about women’s double standards (Hombres Necios Que Acusáis) is by far what she is most known in non-Hispanic academic philosophy, here I will focus on her thoughts about knowledge.

My analysis focuses primarily on Sor Juana’s Primero Sueño (around 1685) poem, which has been divided into three sections: (1) Nightfall; (2) The Soul’s Journey (dreaming) and (3) Day (Paz 1982; Rodríguez, 2012). Although I will be talking solely on the soul’s journey, acknowledging that her complete account of concerning human understanding ––i.e. the essence of how human experiences helps us acquire a complete knowledge of the universe––consists essentially of these three stages is crucial. The world is an unlimited universe full of questions, which answers cannot be found at the first attempt, according to Sor Juana. These three stages, thus,  represent how knowledge is conceived––i.e. night as the time in which the senses stop their activity for a moment, dreaming as the time in which the soul (mind) attempts to understand what it has been perceived, and day represents our constant attempt to understand the world around us.

That being said, the reason I decided to focus on the  soul’s journey is because in this stage Sor Juana illustrates the fundamental difference between intuitive method, which is a thinking method in which truth is immediate and expected “y por mirarlo todo; nada veía, ni discernir magia” (trying to see all things, saw none; nor…could it discern magic), and understanding/comprehension, which is a thinking method in which truth is not immediate nor expected, but pursued and investigated (Bernet, 2006) “aunque a la vista quiso manifiesto dar señas de posible, a la comprehensión no, que entorcepecida…retrocedió cobarde” (immeasurable aggregate in sum beyond comprehension, though, seemingly manifest, to sight almost revealed but… uncomprehend by the mind which, overwhelmed, retreated in defeat).

The process starts with the beginning of the night “El sueño todo, en fin, lo poséia: todo, en fin, el silencio lo ucupaba” (All, finally, by sleep possessed, all in silence embraced).  Thus, the soul sees itself free from the overwhelming senses “así pues, del profundo sueño dulce los miembros ocupados, quedaron los sentidos del que ejercicio tiene ordinario trabajo…si privados no, al menos suspendidos” (to the sweet indolence of sleep having delivered mind and limb and of the ordinary exercise…relieved, if not deprived). Why does the soul need to be free?

One reason, it has been commonly argued, is that dreaming represents Sor Juana’s situated physical reality, as a woman in colonial Mexico where knowledge was gendered male, and her innate thirst for knowledge are not in tension (Rodríguez, 2012). That is, when dreaming her soul (cognitive abilities) is not restrained by her physical reality. Although this interpretation seems plausible, I think that Sor Juana’s description of a soul free from the senses entails more than an account of feminist standpoint epistemology (read also Kirk, 2016). The process Sor Juana describes in Primero Sueño goes beyond an epistemic advantage over phenomena in which gender is implicated. As I mentioned above Sor Juana describes a mechanism concerning human understanding, instead. This is easier to see by looking at the mechanism describe at the dreaming stage. 

After the soul is not distracted by the physical world “El alma, pues, suspensa del exterior gobierno en que ocupada en material empleo” (And thus at least exempt from outer influence––in which its energies well be spent or not, had been materially employed), it starts dreaming. Once the soul started dreaming, it fully appreciates and reports each sense experience image by, first, handing them to the brain “al cerebro enviaba humedos, mas tan claros los vapores de los atemperados cuantro humores” (delivering the four tempered humors to the brain). Then, since the brain is unable to fully and completely see the images, it hands these blurry images to the imagination, which when free from disturbances hands them over to the memory––“los simulacros que la estimative dio a la maginative, y aquesta por custodia más segura en forma ya mas pura entregó a la memoria” (but so light as not to cloud the fancies by perception wrought upon the imagination––thence, for safer keeping, and refined, in memory tenaciously recorded).

The memory will gather and make mental representations of the refined images worked by the brain and the imagination––“y el pincel invisible iba formando de mentales…las figuras no solo ya de todas las criaturas sublunares, mas aun también de aquellas que intelectuales claras son estrellas” (with phantom brush fantastically coloring their invisible design, now conjured up, in mental shapes, not only earthly creatures but the figures in the stars and light of intellect). In other words, Sor Juana describes how from a bundle of images the mind (soul) in it highest form separates each image and aims for a deep understanding of each one of this. Also, it provides an account of understanding and knowing that is not just about gathering images but creating explanations of physical phenomena, which I think is represented by the imagination. The mechanism ends once the day arrives, and since it was impossible to understand everything, the cycle starts again––day (sense experiences), night (freedom of the soul) and dreaming (process of understanding).

Lastly, and most importantly, after having dived deeper into Sor Juana’s work I consider it crucial to teach her as a canon modern philosopher––i.e. she should be part of the reading lists along with philosophers such as Descartes, Hume, Kant, Locke, Berkely, etc. Her account shows that she was thinking and writing about the same topics, her work can be seen as providing an account of dreaming as the means to knowledge. 

Work Cited 

Bernet, R. M. (2004). Voluntad de conocimiento y escepticismo en primero sueño. económica,

469-507.

Cruz, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Obras slectas, colección dirigida por Dámaso Alonso, Editorial

Noguer, Barcelona, 1976.

Juana Inés de la Cruz, Sister, 1651-1695, and Luis Harss (translation). Sor Juana's Dream. New

York, NY: Lumen Books, 1986.

Kirk, S. (2016). Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz and the Gender Politics of Knowledge in Colonial

Mexico. Routledge.

Rodríguez, L. H. (2012). La emoción como búsqueda de la sabiduría en El Primero Sueño de Sor

Juana Inés de la Cruz (1651-1695). Mirabilia: Revista Eletrônica de História Antiga e

Medieval, (15), 6-12.

Paz, O. (1982). Las trampas de la fe. México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, Print.