This paper offers a novel interpretation of the political implications of Hobbes’s theory of imagination and his solution to the threat posed by the imagination to political stability. While recent work has correctly identified the problem the imagination poses for Hobbes, it has underestimated the severity of the problem and, accordingly, has underestimated the length to which the Hobbesian sovereign will have to go in order to solve it. By reconstructing Hobbes’s account of sleep and the operation of the imagination during sleep, this paper argues that the Hobbesian sovereign who seeks to solve the problem of the imagination must maintain his subjects in a ‘state of sleep,’ by preventing any kind of new inputs from disturbing their imagination. This solution suggests that the citizens of the Leviathan state are not sleeping sovereigns, but rather sleeping subjects.

本文对霍布斯的想象力理论的政治含义及其对想象力对政治稳定的威胁的解决方案提供了新颖的解释。尽管最近的工作正确地想象了霍布斯提出的问题，但它却低估了问题的严重性，因此，低估了霍布斯君主解决该问题所必须走的距离。通过重构霍布斯关于睡眠的描述以及在睡眠过程中想象力的运作，本文认为，试图解决想象力问题的霍布斯君主必须通过防止任何新的投入将他的主体保持在“睡眠状态”。不要打扰他们的想象力。该解决方案表明，利维坦州的公民不是在睡觉的君主，