“He who has conquered weakness, and has put away all selfish thoughts, belongs neither to oppressor nor oppressed. He is free.”
There is a lot packed into those three sentences, especially given what Allen says immediately before them.
“He who has conquered weakness…”
First, I don’t think Allen is using weakness simply to mean being physically weak, poor, unsuccessful, or lacking power.
In the paragraphs immediately before this, he’s talking about the relationship between an oppressor and the oppressed. His argument is that both can become trapped in destructive ways of thinking—although obviously their positions and power are not the same.
So when he says “conquered weakness,” he’s pointing inward.
The conquest is over the parts of ourselves that allow fear, resentment, helplessness, uncontrolled desire, hatred, or dependence on another person’s behavior to govern who we become.
And notice his word: conquered.
That’s active.
You don’t accidentally conquer something. There is a struggle involved. Allen’s idea of freedom requires a person to do some internal work.
“…and has put away all selfish thoughts…”
Now he adds another condition.
It’s not enough to become strong.
Because strength without character can simply turn the oppressed into the next oppressor.
That’s where I think this passage gets particularly interesting.
Imagine someone saying, “Nobody will ever control me again.” That sounds like strength. But if their response is now to control everyone else, they haven’t escaped the same system of thinking. They’ve just changed positions within it.
Allen seems to be arguing for something beyond winning the power struggle.
“…belongs neither to oppressor nor oppressed.”
This is probably the heart of the passage.
Allen presents two identities—and then introduces a third possibility:
Freedom.
You’re no longer defining yourself by who has power over you or whom you have power over.
Your identity isn’t “I am the victim.”
But it also isn’t “Now I’m powerful enough to make sure nobody ever does that to me again.”
You’ve stepped outside that relationship altogether.
“He is free.”
That’s an incredibly short sentence after a complicated argument.
And I think that’s intentional.
Allen’s definition of freedom here isn’t merely getting your way. It isn’t defeating another person. It isn’t gaining enough power to dominate the person who once dominated you.
It’s reaching a point where your internal condition is no longer governed by that struggle.
Now, I would still challenge Allen if we take this literally in the real world. A person can develop tremendous inner strength and still experience actual oppression, exploitation, discrimination, imprisonment, poverty, or circumstances outside their control. Inner freedom does not automatically eliminate external injustice.
But there’s still something valuable here:
Someone else may have power over aspects of your circumstances without deserving ownership of your mind, character, or the person you are becoming.
And there’s another side to it that I really like:
Freedom isn’t achieved by becoming powerful enough to oppress somebody else.
That’s a substantially deeper idea than simply “think better and become successful.”
Allen is starting to redefine achievement itself. Before we even get to money, status, career, possessions, or accomplishments, he’s asking whether a person has achieved mastery over himself.
Because if you gain everything externally but remain controlled internally by fear, resentment, selfishness, or the need to dominate—
Allen would probably ask:
Have you actually achieved freedom?