The aim of this article is to explore some of what Hobbes says in Leviathan about what the Leviathan is. I propose that Hobbes is not finally clear on this score. Nonetheless, such indeterminacy might be revealing, insofar as it points us in different directions regarding how the state can be conceptualized, and what it is thought able to do. The paper is thus deliberately open ended: it does not aim to definitively settle interpretative issues, but rather to use Hobbes as a way of thinking about the differing potentials of state theory.

中文翻译：

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什么是利维坦？

本文的目的是探索霍布斯在《利维坦》中所说的关于利维坦是什么的一些内容。我认为霍布斯在这一点上还没有最终清楚。尽管如此，这种不确定性可能具有启发性，因为它为我们指出了如何概念化国家以及人们认为它能够做什么的不同方向。因此，这篇论文是故意开放式的：它的目的不是明确解决解释性问题，而是将霍布斯用作思考国家理论不同潜力的一种方式。