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Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz

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Also known as Juana Inés de Asbaje y Ramírez de Santillana, Sor Juana

1648 (or 1651) – 1695 · San Miguel Nepantla, Mexico City

Traditions: Latin American

In brief

Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1648 or 1651 – 1695) was a poet, playwright and scholar in colonial Mexico, then New Spain, who spent most of her adult life as a nun in Mexico City. She was celebrated in her lifetime as a poet. Her best-known prose work, the Reply to Sor Filotea (1691), defends her own studies and women’s right to learn, on the grounds that women too have a rational soul. Her long poem First Dream follows a soul trying, and failing, to know the whole of the world. Recent philosophers read her as a serious theorist of knowledge and of the virtues a learner needs. Shortly before her death she gave up her studies, under pressure from church authorities according to some scholars.

In depth Last reviewed

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Places
Mexico City worked
Tradition
Latin American
Influences
7 sourced relationships

Life

Juana Inés Ramírez de Asbaje was born at San Miguel Nepantla, about 60 km south-east of Mexico City, in November 1648 or on 12 November 1651; sources disagree. The 1651 date comes from the early biography by the Jesuit Diego Calleja and is still given, with a query, by Britannica. A baptismal record of 2 December 1648, believed to be hers, points to 1648, the year preferred by the EBSCO Research Starters entry and, with a query, by the Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes; Project Vox leaves the question open. Her mother was a criolla, a woman of Spanish descent born in the Americas; her father, a Spanish captain, played little part in her life. She learned from her grandfather’s library and wanted to attend university dressed as a boy, which was not allowed. She moved to Mexico City in 1656, and in 1664 joined the viceroy’s court as lady-in-waiting to the vicereine, Leonor Carreto. Project Vox reports that in 1668 about forty scholars examined her and were astonished by her learning. After a few months with the Carmelite nuns in 1667, she entered the Hieronymite convent of San Jerónimo in 1669. She stayed there for life, writing, keeping the convent’s accounts and keeping close ties with the court. Her collected poems appeared in Madrid (1689) and Seville (1692). In 1690 the bishop of Puebla published her critique of a sermon without her consent, signing his preface ‘Sor Filotea’; her Reply followed in 1691. By 1694 she had renounced her studies and given up her books and instruments. She died in Mexico City on 17 April 1695 (the date in Britannica and most accounts; Project Vox’s chronology gives 15 April), during an outbreak of plague in the convent.

Problems

  • Do women have the same right and capacity to study as men?
  • What must a person know before they can understand theology and scripture?
  • Which virtues make a good inquirer, and is curiosity one of them?
  • Can the human mind grasp the whole of reality, either at a glance or step by step?
  • What can ordinary, everyday experience teach about nature?

Core ideas

A rational soul like men

In a letter of the early 1680s to her former confessor, Antonio Núñez de Miranda, now known as the Spiritual Self-Defence, she asks why women should be kept from private study. Do they not, she asks, have a rational soul just as men do? She rejects the idea that study and salvation are opposed. In the Reply to Sor Filotea she develops the point: virtue, not birth or sex, should decide who may study, and men can lack virtue as much as women. She supports this with a long list of learned women, from Deborah in the Bible and the ancient Sibyls to learned Greek and Roman women and female saints. Ofelia Schutte reads her as treating gender as a social condition that should be changed so that women can use their God-given reason. A general question is whether a list of exceptional women shows that all women should be taught.

Learning as the road to theology

The bishop’s letter urged her to turn from secular learning to religious study. Her Reply turns this around. Theology, she argues, cannot be understood without the other arts and sciences that serve it. Errors in reading scripture can amount to heresy, so, she argues, it is safer to study other subjects first. Natural philosophy, the study of nature, helps make scripture intelligible. Sofia Ortiz-Hinojosa sums up the point: the goals of study serve the goals of contemplation, because theology needs knowledge of many other fields. The argument let her defend her wide reading as a form of humility and service, not vanity. A general objection is that it still ranks all learning by its use to theology, so it defends secular study only as a means to something else.

The virtues of a learner

Ortiz-Hinojosa argues that the Reply contains a ‘virtue epistemology’: an account of knowledge built around the character traits of a good inquirer. On her reading Sor Juana changes the tradition in several ways. Humility drives learning instead of holding it back. Curiosity is treated as a companion of studiousness, not simply as a vice, as it largely was for Augustine and Aquinas. The capacity to know and to act well is the same in women and men. And a learner’s standing should rest on things others can observe, such as her actual work, which makes it harder to dismiss her because she is a woman. This is one recent reconstruction, presented by its author as an initial sketch. An open question is how far it reflects Sor Juana’s own intentions rather than a modern framework applied to her.

First Dream: the soul’s attempt to know everything

First Dream (Primero sueño), printed in 1692, is her longest poem and the one most read by philosophers. As night falls and the body sleeps, the soul rises and tries to take in the whole universe at once. It fails, because there is too much to take in. It then tries a slower method, working step by step through Aristotle’s categories, the basic kinds of thing that exist. The poem leaves it unresolved whether this method could succeed. At dawn the soul sinks back into the body, and the poem ends with the words ‘Yo, despierta’ (‘I, awake’), where the adjective’s ending shows that the dreamer is a woman. Project Vox notes Platonic, Hermetic and Scholastic sources. Scholars disagree on how sceptical the poem is: some read it as a lesson about the limits of knowledge, others find hints that some knowledge is possible.

Philosophies of the kitchen

In the Reply she describes learning from the ordinary things around her, including what she noticed while cooking, such as how eggs and sugar behave. She asks, with irony, ‘¿qué podemos saber las mujeres sino filosofías de cocina?’ (‘what can we women know but kitchen philosophies?’), and adds, ‘Si Aristóteles hubiera guisado, mucho más hubiera escrito’ (‘If Aristotle had cooked, he would have written much more’). The joke has a serious point. Nature can be studied anywhere, and work traditionally assigned to women is a place where knowledge can be gained, not a barrier to it. Project Vox also links her views on cooking, poetry and music, which she connected with goodness and beauty. A general open question is how much weight this passage can bear: is it a real account of learning from experience, or chiefly a witty defence of herself?

Works

  • Inundación castálida 1689Her first published volume of poetry, printed in Madrid.
  • El divino Narciso (The Divine Narcissus), with its loa 1689A religious drama. Its prologue (loa) brings Indigenous and Spanish characters towards shared religious ground.
  • Carta atenagórica (Letter Worthy of Athena) 1690Her critique of a sermon by Antonio Vieira on Christ’s proofs of his love, defending Augustine, Aquinas and Chrysostom. Published without her consent by the bishop of Puebla.
  • Segundo tomo de las obras 1692Second volume of her works, printed in Seville; it includes First Dream, the Carta atenagórica and two plays.
  • Primero sueño (First Dream) printed 1692Her longest poem: the soul’s night journey in search of universal knowledge.
  • Respuesta a Sor Filotea de la Cruz (Reply to Sor Filotea) written 1691; published 1700Her defence of her studies and of women’s learning, published after her death in Fama y obras póstumas (Madrid, 1700).
  • Letter to her confessor (Spiritual Self-Defence) early 1680sA private letter to Antonio Núñez de Miranda, asking why women with rational souls should be denied study.
  • Philosophical-moral sonnetsEight sonnets grouped under this heading, warning against vanity, ambition, fear of death and false hope, with Epicurean and Socratic echoes.

Influences and relationships

7 sourced relationships. Open one to read why, and the source.

Shaped or answered Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz 5

  • Influenced byAugustine of Hippo354 – 430

    A source she drew on and defended; on Ortiz-Hinojosa’s reading she departs from Augustine (and Aquinas) by treating curiosity as a companion virtue, not only a vice.

    Source: cambridge.org · stated on the profile of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz

    Augustine of Hippo’s relationships

  • Influenced byThomas Aquinasc. 1225 – 1274

    Aquinas and the Spanish Scholastics shaped her philosophical vocabulary; she defends him, with Augustine, against Vieira’s sermon.

    Source: projectvox.org · stated on the profile of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz

    Thomas Aquinas’s relationships

  • Influenced by · disputedRené Descartes1596 – 1650

    No direct evidence that she read him; scholars disagree.

    Whether she knew Descartes’s work is debated. Ortiz-Hinojosa lists Descartes and Gassendi as debated possible sources; Schutte notes that, since his works were on the Church’s Index of Prohibited Books, it would not have been prudent for her to cite him even if she knew them.

    Source: cah.ucf.edu · stated on the profile of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz

    René Descartes’s relationships

  • Influenced byAthanasius Kircherno profile yet

    Schutte notes that she owned several of Kircher’s books and alludes to theories of music and magnetism; Project Vox names him, with Giordano Bruno, among the Hermetic and Neoplatonic writers scholars link to her work.

    Source: cah.ucf.edu · stated on the profile of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz

  • Criticised byManuel Fernández de Santa Cruzno profile yet

    The bishop of Puebla, writing as ‘Sor Filotea’, rebuked her for devoting herself to poetry and secular learning; her Reply answers him.

    Source: projectvox.org · stated on the profile of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz

Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz shaped or answered 2

  • InfluencedOctavio Paz1914 – 1998

    Paz’s 1982 biography revived wide interest in her, though Project Vox suggests it also fed a sensationalised reception.

    Source: projectvox.org · stated on the profile of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz

    Octavio Paz’s relationships

  • CriticisedAntonio Vieirano profile yet

    Her Carta atenagórica criticises Vieira’s sermon on Christ’s proofs of love and offers her own account.

    Source: projectvox.org · stated on the profile of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz

Reception

In her lifetime she was celebrated mainly as a poet, called the ‘Tenth Muse’, and her works were printed in Spain. The Reply survived her silence and was published in 1700. Octavio Paz’s 1982 biography revived wide interest, and Project Vox suggests it also encouraged a sensational picture of her, seen in the 1990 film I, the Worst of All. She has appeared on Mexican banknotes and is widely treated as a feminist and multicultural figure; some of her carols use Nahuatl. Philosophers have more recently read her as a thinker in her own right: Ofelia Schutte on her appeals to reason, and Sofia Ortiz-Hinojosa on her theory of the virtues of inquiry. There is still no settled view on whether she is best described as a late Scholastic, an early modern or neither.

Disputed interpretations

Was her renunciation of learning forced?

In 1694, Project Vox reports, under pressure from her former confessor Núñez de Miranda and Francisco de Aguiar y Seijas, she renounced her studies and gave up her books and instruments, reportedly signing a statement in her own blood as ‘the worst of all’. Some scholars, including Leonard and Octavio Paz, read this as forced on her. Others see a real religious choice. The evidence does not settle the question.

Is First Dream sceptical about knowledge?

The soul fails to grasp the universe at once, and the poem leaves open whether its step-by-step method could work. Some scholars read the poem as committed to scepticism. Others find hints that some knowledge is possible. Ortiz-Hinojosa links her sceptical moments, mainly in the poetry, to the sceptic Francisco Sanches.

Scholastic, modern or neither?

Mary Morkovsky called her philosophy basically late Scholasticism. Octavio Paz judged her modernity ‘timid and incomplete’. Laura Benítez argues that she rejects Scholastic method without adopting another. Ortiz-Hinojosa disputes all three and argues that she endorses a method of inquiry of her own, challenging Scholasticism from within.

Primary texts

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Guides

In the Book corner

  • Response to Sor Filotea 1691 · Beginner
    A long letter written in 1691 by the Mexican nun and poet Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. The Bishop of Puebla…

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Written and kept up to date by the Coordinates of Thought editors. Each statement was checked against the sources listed above before publishing; this page is not peer-reviewed. Last updated 28 October 2026. How to cite this site.

APA (7th edition)

Coordinates of Thought Editors. (2026, October 28). Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. Coordinates of Thought. Retrieved [date accessed], from https://coordinatesofthought.com/thinker/sor-juana-ines-de-la-cruz/

MLA (9th edition)

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Chicago (17th edition)

Coordinates of Thought Editors. “Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz.” Coordinates of Thought. Last modified October 28, 2026. https://coordinatesofthought.com/thinker/sor-juana-ines-de-la-cruz/.

BibTeX

@misc{cot-sor-juana-ines-de-la-cruz-2026,
  author       = {{Coordinates of Thought Editors}},
  title        = {Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz},
  howpublished = {Coordinates of Thought},
  year         = {2026},
  month        = oct,
  url          = {https://coordinatesofthought.com/thinker/sor-juana-ines-de-la-cruz/},
  note         = {Last updated 28 October 2026}
}

RIS

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T2  - Coordinates of Thought
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