Well, I believe the origins of the left-right division are from the time of the French Revolution when the proponents of the Ancien Régime sat on the right side of the French National Assembly while the revolutionaries of the Third Estate sat on the left.
"Well, I believe the origins of the left-right division are from the time of the French Revolution when the proponents of the Ancien Régime sat on the right side of the French National Assembly while the revolutionaries of the Third Estate sat on the left."
I'm sure you're right, but The Enlightenment began a century earlier and was more or less ending by that time, partly because the French Revolution would give ammo to Anti-Enlightenment critics. So "Left-right" would be to my mind a "Post-Enlightenment" political assignation. I guess my objection is only that Modern Left-Wing Liberalism and late 18th century Republicanism are two different things and could easily be confused as similar if the same term were to be applied to both.
It's like in the 90's when soviet communists suddenly became "Conservatives", remember?
The people on the right side did not support the ancient regime, they wanted a constitutional republic with a monarch. The people sitting on the left wanted to kill all aristocrats.