The text considers Spinoza's two dichotomies of desire as producer of value judgments: passionate desire versus rational desire and ethical desire versus political desire, and explains why any agreement on values has a political character. It then deals with the way in which he constructs what he calls "dictates of reason" through the universal notion of man and the idea of evil. It looks at the sociality spontaneously woven by the imitation of the affects and the intellectual cooperation of the multitude. And, finally, it outlines the concept of common desire suited to a free multitude. Its thesis is that the common desire for harmony that moves a free multitude to act is constituted, paradoxically, in the dispute for the shared definitions of good and evil, i.e., in the dispute over the institution of imperium.