The conflictive power of passions to which men are subjected is frequently mentioned in Spinoza's work. In the absence of a civil state, such passions would lead individuals to live as natural enemies. However, without mutual assistance, they would hardly be able to sustain their lives, much less cultivate their minds. Nevertheless, the existence of a civil state depends precisely on the ability of its members to reach agreements on various issues, which brings us to the central question of this thesis: how can men, by nature enemies, manage to establish common agreements? In other words, how do men, who are often drawn in different directions and are contrary to one another, while they require one another’s aid, manage to reach a common consensus that discerns what is good and what is evil in their society? To assess this question, we present a reading of the three works by Spinoza that explicitly deal with politics, namely, the Theological-Political Treatise, the Ethics, and the Political Treatise. At first, we pursue an explanation, based on affective mechanisms, especially the imitation of the affects, of how men, insofar as they are ignorant of the causes of things, that is, before they develop their reason, manage to come to agreements, which we named passional common consensus. We then appreciate how this passional common consensus may have emerged historically, sustaining not only a religion but also an actual civil state, that of the Hebrews. Finally, we analyze what does and what does not belong to reason in the origination and stabilization of common consensus.
Key-words: philosophy, Spinoza, Ethics, politics, consensus, agreement