In the Myth of Er in the Republic, Plato describes various aspects of the soul’s afterlife. At 614e3-615a4, he writes that souls who have gathered on the plain of judgment are then divided into those who lived morally good lives and so rise into a place of reward and those who have not who descend into the realm of punishment.  On the souls’ return to the plain after their time above or below, they greet one another and tell each other of their experiences.  Some 700 years later, Proclus in his commentary on the Republic tries to answer some issues that this short passage must have raised for some philosophers in antiquity. The problem is simple enough:  how can souls who do not have bodies or organs of sense communicate in this way?

Proclus lays out his response in several stages. He agrees, of course, that souls in the underworld do not have corporeal bodies. However, they do have ethereal vehicles, and these vehicles, he says, are more closely adapted to the souls and therefore less likely to introduce errors in the souls. Thus, the seeing and hearing in Hades is actually clearer and more directly known than those that occur when we are imprisoned in our bodies. These vehicles retain the images received when we were embodied, and thus we can recognize other souls and communicate with them.  As for hearing and speaking, the vehicles are actually better at these tasks than the organs in our bodies. How Proclus reaches these conclusions is not immediately clear from the Republic commentary, but with the aid of other works, especially the Timaeus commentary, we will be able to see how Proclus can make the case for disembodied souls speaking and hearing in the underworld.