Monday, December 10, 2007

Some of behaviours come from one’s characters, while other behaviours come from his temperament. What are differences between those two? Temperament is the mode of one’s reactions to various stimuli coming from his environment or from within himself. One’s temperament has a close relation with his biopsychology conditions, so it can hardly change and is neutral to good/bad judgements. Meanwhile, character has a close relation with of good/bad judgements of one’s behaviours based on various parameters held by the society. Characters are formed during one‘s life experience, so that it can change. Temperament doesn’t have any ethical implication; meanwhile character often becomes an object of ethical judgements.

Some people may have temperaments that are in contradiction with their own characters. A person can have a bad temperament while his/her character is good. If his temperament is at work, he tends to act negatively. Later he will regret it and ashamed of what he had done, although this bad temperament tends to reappear. Furthermore, a person who has a bad character but has a good temperament is usually able to hide his bad character from others. Deceivers usually have good temperaments but their characters are bad. The worst is a bad-character person who also has a bad temperament.

Permanent characters will form a personality. According to Freud, man’s personality consists of three pillars, which are Id, Ego, and Super Ego, or animal, intellectual, and moral elements. Behavior, in Freud’s opinion, is an interaction among those three pillars. Freud concludes, however, that human is a Homo Volens, a creature who has wishes and that his behaviors are controlled by wishes hidden in his subconscious mind. This conclusion underestimates man’s dignity.

According to Islam, personality is an interaction among soul (nafs), heart (qalb), mind (`aql), and conscience (bashirah) qualities. Personality, in addition to being provided with inborn tendencies and genetic heritage from one’s parents, is also formed through a long process during his lifetime, including internalisation of values, knowledge’s, and experiences in his self. In this perspective, religious faith one obtains from knowledge’s and experiences also enters his personality structure. A Muslim with a strong Muslim personality can’t enjoy the delicious of pork, although it has been cooked in accordance with his taste. A Muslim with a strong Muslim personality can’t enjoy the property obtained through corruption. He also always awakes from his sound sleep if he hasn’t done his Isha prayer yet.
Obviously, every Muslim has a different Muslim personality quality. The quality itself isn’t necessarily constant. Sometime it is firm, intact, and prime. But in other times it can be distorted by influences coming from sources other than his religion.