Hi, I'm Peter Adamson, and you're listening to the History of Philosophy podcast brought to

you with the support of Keynes College London and the Lever Hume Trust, online at

www. History of Philosophy.W.

History of Philosophy.net.

Today's episode will be an interview about the ancient commentators on Aristotle

with Richard Serraubji, who is an emeritus professor of philosophy at Kings and an honorary fellow at Wolfson College.

Hi Richard, thanks for coming back on the podcast.

It's very nice to be back, Peter.

You're a particularly appropriate person, maybe the most appropriate person I could have, to talk about the ancient commentators, because for many years you've been running a translation series, the Ancient Commentators Project,

at Kings, which I think is just about to produce its hundredth volume, is that right?

That's right.

Can you start maybe by telling us how you got the idea for this very ambitious project and how it came to fruition?

Well, when I was a very young lecturer in my first job in America at Cornell University,

I said to an older colleague, Norman Kretsman,

wouldn't it be wonderful if we could have a translation of the ancient

commentators on Aristotle?

I was very ignorant in those days.

I merely thought it would be so useful for understanding Aristotle, which was true.

I didn't realize how interesting they were in their own right.

And 20 years later, Kretsman was chairman of the committee, which was deciding on grants for translation projects for the National Endowment for the Humanities, the main American government federal fund for

funding humanities.

And he asked his committee when they'd done their year's work and selections.

...