Abstract

I discuss the origins of the idea of a political “Left”. I trace them back to historical circumstances of the French Revolution and, behind them, to ways of symbolical representation to be located within the framework of symbolic spatial organization of the social space. “Left” is, more than a concept, a symbol or a metaphor. That Left is connected in its very roots with the idea of equality. The very idea of democracy is connected in a similar way both to the ideal of Equality and to the idea of a Left. Besides, the universally shared normative ideal of democracy and the (to a point) universally shared normative ideal of equality are carried as a matter of course by the very framework of democracy as a set of institutions.