Silsilat Al-Anwar comes to us in this issue titled "The City and the Human Being."

Humans are inherently disposed to three things: conceptualization, gathering, and urbanization. Through these characteristics—with the addition of morality—humanity is realized as distinct from animality. An animal grouping does not think, and a grouping that does not think remains instinctive and random. From this purely human synthesis, philosophers decided to engineer thought, and scholars of the human sciences sought to record history, articulating the reality of construction and embodying the city in its most splendid manifestations of splendor—just as many eloquent figures, from Plato, Aristotle, and Augustine to Al-Farabi and Ibn Bajjah, wrote about the dreams of moderns and ancients regarding the possibility of the city between earth and sky, and the recurring accounts of it among simple inhabitants and virtuous citizens.

The city is an idea, a behavior, and a civilized appearance that reflects the growth of human thought, conduct, and adaptability to the other and the stranger, considering that it represents the realization of multiplicity within unity and the meeting of singular individuals. Thus, philosophical models of the human being in the city emerged describing them with qualities of perfection—in conduct and tactful behavior, in manifestations of beauty through planning, drawing, and the arts, and in signs pointing toward law and order in the course of affairs. It is an image of respect for state institutions, given that the city is the most significant real-world manifestation of the state. It signifies "a continuous act of transcending the state of division arising from the 'state of deficiency' that humans face when isolation overcomes them, rendering them withdrawn, unable to embody their thought or action." Under these conditions, unity is required after gathering—a unity that involves overcoming obstacles and evading hard blows, aiming to reach models of the rational city (the city of the wise) or the virtuous city (the city of the good).

The city thus exists in a middle isthmus (barzakh), transcending all blueprints, positioned between an anthropological reality and a philosophical conception, with a subtle difference between action and ideal. This is precisely what our present occasion seeks to explore, investigating its secrets and uncovering its hidden dimensions. The city is a gathering of the scattered and a unifying of the different while preserving the distinctiveness of difference. For those who come to it seek either to escape a bitter reality (isolation and terrorism in the suburbs) or to pursue wealth through economic openness and cultural interaction, so that it becomes a granted refuge and an open sanctuary. On the other hand, however, it contradicts its outward facade by erasing specificities, serving as a window that kills identities and pulls back the curtains of intimacy. In doing so, its moral paradoxes become manifest and its normative dualities are exposed: To what extent can the city be philosophically engineered? And how can it become acceptable to make it a horizon for possible human coexistence?

Prof. Dr. Mourad Gouasmi