Al-Ghazali's Psychological Construct of Nafsu

Abstract

A preliminary study was conducted to trace the attribution of causes of immoral behavior. This study found that most participants revealed Nafsu as the cause of such immoral behaviors. This study aimed to find out about the discourse of Nafsu in Ihya ‘Ulumuddin text written by Al-Ghazali as one of the sources of explanation of the term Nafsu. This study used Foucauldian Discourse Analysis (FDA) method to construct Nafsu model. The result explained Nafsu as a psychological state which is infuenced by three major components of Nafsu, namely the intellect (‘aql), desire (syahwat), and anger. This study also developed the psychological construct of Nafsu to explain immoral behaviors.