Machine summary:
Safi This article argues that modem secular psychology with its antireligious origins depends on a limited ontology of human nature which excludes human volition as well as its transcendental and unchanging elements.
2 By denying the fact that the mental world is the manifestation of a transcendental mind, mainstream Western psychology gave rise to a deterministic conception of man in which the ideas of "human will" and "individual responsibility" are negated.
120 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 15:4 The only way to explain the dubious denial of permanent human nature by appealing to change in patterns of expression is to locate such claims within the larger context of secularization of science and life which has been going on in West em society for a couple of centuries.
It should be of great concern to us that the conception of human nature adopted by the most prominent schools of Western psychology undermines the idea of a human volition capable of restructuring individual behavior in accordance with a set of values and beliefs; such a conception has far-reaching consequences on the methods used in the areas of education and social conditioning.
What strikes us when we examine the work of early Muslim scholars is their emphasis on the concepts of "sublimation" and "volition" in explaining human behavior.
Through adopting a more comprehensive approach to studying human nature, similar to the one developed by early Muslim scholars, we can free ourselves from the ethos of adaptation to which modern psychology has succumbed, and rise once again to the ethos of sublimation, transformation, and self-control.