Does humanity still need interpretation (hermeneutics), given that it has already interpreted everything around it — living beings and objects alike — explaining them and being explained through them, to the point that it seems as though humans know nothing in this world but interpretation? And what need does the Arabic language have for this art/science, having demonstrated to its speakers throughout its history that it is malleable enough to express their ideas, news, and truths completely and eloquently? Raising these two questions may suggest that interpretation has become a common practice in people's daily lives — a general, public act performed effortlessly, requiring little intellectual deliberation. Yet we acknowledge, even in a whisper, that our experience in this world tells us that the world never ceases to deceive us, revealing only those truths that are possible and easy to uncover — sometimes so easy as to be trivial. Because humanity's setbacks from the triviality of truths are many, and because truth is always a certain truth in a certain language, humans have come to realize — with painful certainty — the limitations, narrowness, and failure of their language to convey all that they wish to say, especially when vision expands, as Al-Niffari said, and expression becomes too narrow to carry it.

Accordingly, the drive has continued to renew itself in people from every era who rise to the task of interpreting the world's texts — that is, who risk their bodies and minds to carry us from the discourse of apparent truth in those texts to the discourses of hidden truths within them. For them, interpretation is not merely a method of knowledge; it is also a necessary mode of existence in the world, as Heidegger articulated. Indeed, interpretation is a building and reviving of the world: it builds the world because with every moment of interpretation a new meaning is added — whether science, art, values, or philosophies — and in every moment of interpretation a text of this world comes alive and finds pleasure. To interpret a text is to breathe life into it, for a text is nothing but a linguistic body that lives through understanding, and a word within it is nothing but a sound glorifying the allure planted within it, as hermeneuticians say with pride. Therefore, reading and interpretation become one of the paths by which peoples spread tolerance — inciting it in and through the text.

In this horizon, interpretation becomes an intellectual opportunity to understand Arabic language issues — both linguistically and literarily — more deeply, and to clarify many semantic, syntactic, systemic, rhetorical, and critical issues. This is what this conference seeks to explore through discussing the most prominent manifestations of interpretation at various levels of the Arabic language, its functions and systems, and the outcomes of all this in linguistic, literary, critical, translational, communicative, and ethical production, along with the related intellectual issues and challenges — theoretically, practically, and prospectively.

Does humanity still need interpretation (hermeneutics), given that it has already interpreted everything around it — living beings and objects alike — explaining them and being explained through them, to the point that it seems as though humans know nothing in this world but interpretation? And what need does the Arabic language have for this art/science, having demonstrated to its speakers throughout its history that it is malleable enough to express their ideas, news, and truths completely and eloquently? Raising these two questions may suggest that interpretation has become a common practice in people's daily lives — a general, public act performed effortlessly, requiring little intellectual deliberation. Yet we acknowledge, even in a whisper, that our experience in this world tells us that the world never ceases to deceive us, revealing only those truths that are possible and easy to uncover — sometimes so easy as to be trivial. Because humanity's setbacks from the triviality of truths are many, and because truth is always a certain truth in a certain language, humans have come to realize — with painful certainty — the limitations, narrowness, and failure of their language to convey all that they wish to say, especially when vision expands, as Al-Niffari said, and expression becomes too narrow to carry it.

Accordingly, the drive has continued to renew itself in people from every era who rise to the task of interpreting the world's texts — that is, who risk their bodies and minds to carry us from the discourse of apparent truth in those texts to the discourses of hidden truths within them. For them, interpretation is not merely a method of knowledge; it is also a necessary mode of existence in the world, as Heidegger articulated. Indeed, interpretation is a building and reviving of the world: it builds the world because with every moment of interpretation a new meaning is added — whether science, art, values, or philosophies — and in every moment of interpretation a text of this world comes alive and finds pleasure. To interpret a text is to breathe life into it, for a text is nothing but a linguistic body that lives through understanding, and a word within it is nothing but a sound glorifying the allure planted within it, as hermeneuticians say with pride. Therefore, reading and interpretation become one of the paths by which peoples spread tolerance — inciting it in and through the text.

In this horizon, interpretation becomes an intellectual opportunity to understand Arabic language issues — both linguistically and literarily — more deeply, and to clarify many semantic, syntactic, systemic, rhetorical, and critical issues. This is what this conference seeks to explore through discussing the most prominent manifestations of interpretation at various levels of the Arabic language, its functions and systems, and the outcomes of all this in linguistic, literary, critical, translational, communicative, and ethical production, along with the related intellectual issues and challenges — theoretically, practically, and prospectively.