Some texts do not reach us through the randomness of archives, but through a discreet chain of transmission and care. This interview with Malek Bennabi, recorded in Tripoli (Libya) on 24 January 1973, belongs to this rare category. It represents one of his last public statements, delivered without ceremony, yet with that calm depth characteristic of those who have reached the threshold — before words withdraw.

Here you will find neither final confession nor staged goodbye. Bennabi does not tell his own story: he continues to observime, questions, puts things in order. He speaks of philosophy without losing himself in it, of religion without freezing it, of civilization without turning it into ideology. Through Al-Ghazali and Ibn Rushd, East and West, politics and spirituality, one connecting thread remains whole: the priority of meaning over power, of responsibility over accumulation.

This profound conversation strikes us as much through what it says as through what it hints at. We sense the quiet worry of a world full of objects, technologies and talk, yet threatened by a deeper inner damage. Bennabi uses neither dramatic accusation nor condemnation; he identifies with almost surgical precision the signs of a humanity at risk of losing its balance — not from lack of resources, but from too much confusion. The careful reader will recognize here a question running through our time, that of a century where horror often hides behind the normal.

This text does not call for quick reading. It requires slowness, openness, even a kind of discipline. Behind the clear exchange lies a crossing: from the thinker’s voice to the reader’s responsibility. Bennabi would fall silent forever just months later; what remains is the trust he places in us.

To publish this interview today means accepting that it should not only be read, but understood and carried forward. Not as an intellectual museum piece, but as a doorway — where words end, and the demanding work of thinking begins.

Amir Nour