In all my studies and research, a fundamental problem continues to arise despite the diversity of my concerns: contemporary mistrust of philosophical systems and totalizing doctrines. The current thinking, can it be "out" of the system and in such case is it not primarily a "thinking against", a negating negativity since it is "without": without object (Althusser, Foucault), without doctrine (Desanti), without place (Derrida, Prigogine, Stengers) without interest (Wittgenstein) ?

As early as during my PhD thesis entitled: "The idea of war in modern political thought," I tried to navigate the winding path of modern philosophy through its various detours (the philosophers of natural law, the dialectic, strategic thinking, Marxism etc.). and beyond the typical project to which the concept of war has remained foreign, to query what has always been considered an "unthought" (Châtelet) or as a "limit".

In “Plato and the dialectics” that was originally a course given to students the first year of philosophy at the University of Tunis, 1976-1978, I tried to clarify the birth of this Socratic tension by thinking about the method of construction of the intrinsic discourse of the philosophy (in its Platonic variant by the exclusion and refutation of the Sophist discourse). It should be noted that this book was for me the starting point for an investigation into the way according to which it is maybe necessary to read again the history of the philosophy outside the historicist scope and away from the Imperium of "isms." This idea has been developed later, in my book “Vagabond Philosophy”, published in Arabic in Beirut in 1987.

Is it then necessary to praise the open philosophy at the risk of subjecting to the question all the closed systems including the Hegelian-Marxist system which was at the origin of the "ideological" totalisation of the thought and the politicization totalist of the action? This step was taken by the book “Readings in philosophy of diversity” which I published in Tunis in 1988 and where I revised some ideas in “Plato and the dialectics” on the enigmatic relationship between Socrates and the Sophists, by trying to rehabilitate the philosophies of the Sophists and to show their importance in the construction of the extrinsic speech of the philosophy, speech which will end in a philosophy opened to the social and moral concerns of people.

The issue of the identity, for example, was the object of a book published in Paris at Arcantères in 1998, entitled “The strategy of the identity”. It is an essay on the dialectic of the identity and the globality. It has, for object, the debating of the strategic aspects of the identity as a mean to protect itself from potential dangers of the globalization and as intelligent way of persevering in own being without withdrawing.

May I consider it as a way of rehabilitating my identity as Arab and Muslim? Does not this rehabilitation go against the thought of the difference and of openness? This problem was for me decisive, not only because it existentialise my ideas by rooting me in my presence, but also because it puts me in front of my fate as to be belonging to a great civilization certainly but how much underestimated and often deliberately obscured and in any case depreciated. Should we then go back to the history which was ours to locate a thought of diversity, tolerance, freedom, human being? Is it necessary to look in the folds of the history of Arab and Islamic ideas for what may constitute our being as constancy to oneself and as mutability,  giving to the difference, otherness and opening their constitutive functions in the me? It was the fundamental project of my research thesis entitled: "The formation of the historian spirit in the Arab civilization”

This problem was the object of a book I co-authored with Professor Rachida Boubaker-Triki, on the philosophy of the modernity, where I tried to rectify generally accepted ideas on the concept of modernity and to locate what can be constituent in the identity of the man in the Arabic and Islamic civilization.

I headed - at the Academy of Letters, Arts and Sciences - a research group on the history of Arabic sciences who has published several books in this field. It was an opportunity for me to work, from the texts of al-Farabi, but also of Aristotle, the ethics of reasonableness that combines theoretical reason and practical reason to direct science and technology to moral concerns.

For al-Farabi, the reasonableness is what gives the reason its social dimension, since it can be at the origin of the fabric of relations with the others as the fundamental criterion of any humanism... It is then this set of design criteria and practical arrangements, the realization of which in the daily activity of the man would make him a reasonable person, living according to the demands of reason and being able to persevere in his being (to speak a Spinozien language).

This issue was the object of a theoretical development in my inaugural lecture of the UNESCO Chair of Philosophy, published under the title "The philosophy of living together". The term usability must be understood in the sense of the translation of the Arabic word “ta'ânus” which associates to the rational and reasonable sociality of the man, the pleasure of the meeting, the generous sharing of goods and ideas, the friendship and the affection, the hospitality and the opening to the other.

In the various debates with my colleagues and my students, a relevant question challenged me, which concerns the modes of approach of the conviviality and the means which we can use to achieve this ideal relationship between people.

This initiative was started in my book in Arabic on modernity and post-modernity, which is actually a dialogue with the Egyptian intellectual Abdelwahab Maciri on the ardent questions of current philosophical events. This initiative begins to take shape in the seminaries organized currently by the annual UNESCO Chair in Philosophy of Tunis with the University of Bremen (Germany).

These various researches and studies are, partially, owed to the enrichment which the educational and scientific activities within high schools and Universities allowed me to have. Indeed, from the obtaining of my PhD, I integrated the secondary high school of Monastir as professor of philosophy. There, I learnt to master educationally the pedagogical introduction to philosophical problems. In 1976, I was recruited as an assistant professor at the faculty where I taught a course on philosophy and war for students of third year. This second course was, for me, the opportunity to do research in Arabic on Western philosophy. It was, indeed, at the origin of my book “Platon and the dialectic” published initially by Media Publishing, than by MTE and than reissued by NMCS in Algeria.

Appointed lecturer in 1978, I provided courses within the philosophy department and taught at the same time, at departments of psychology, sociology and at ITAAUT. This was an opportunity to practice teaching texts of Descartes, Kant (Critique of Practical Reason), Sartre, Althusser and so on... I also taught courses in general philosophy on writing the history, the dialectic, the nature, the time, the freedom, etc... In 1986 I was appointed lecturer then professor and I have provided courses on different topics including the temporality, the truth, the event and the modernity. I supervised several researches on problems of general philosophy and of history of the philosophy.

From 1983 to 1989, I led a multidisciplinary seminar at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences of Tunis around several themes including the performance, efficiency, knowledge, power and temporality. In 1990 I was appointed Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Sfax, where I taught three courses, the first on the problem of being in Plato, the second on the philosophy of history, and the third on the history of science in the Arab and Islamic civilization. In 1996, I joined the University of Tunis, where I founded the UNESCO Chair of philosophy around the problem of otherness, and the first laboratory of Philosophy in Tunisia (PHILAB) around the question: "Cultures, Technologies and philosophical approaches". I set up an international research group of Philosophy to research the question of Foreign as it is grasped by the philosophy. I run with Professor Gary Jesùs a research project on "Forms of rationality and Intercultural Dialogue" at the European University of Madrid. I am also part of several national and international committees working for reform and evaluation of philosophy teaching.