It was contrasted to metaphysics, which was, like Cartesianism, associated with the Ancien Régime. In the ensuing 18th century Enlightenment, common sense came to be seen more positively as the basis for modern thinking. Therefore, a skeptical logical method described by Descartes needs to be followed and common sense should not be overly relied upon.
In the opening line of one of his most famous books, Discourse on Method, Descartes established the most common modern meaning, and its controversies, when he stated that everyone has a similar and sufficient amount of common sense ( bon sens), but it is rarely used well. It was at the beginning of the 18th century that this old philosophical term first acquired its modern English meaning: "Those plain, self-evident truths or conventional wisdom that one needed no sophistication to grasp and no proof to accept precisely because they accorded so well with the basic (common sense) intellectual capacities and experiences of the whole social body." This began with Descartes's criticism of it, and what came to be known as the dispute between " rationalism" and " empiricism". Since the Age of Enlightenment the term "common sense" has been used for rhetorical effect both approvingly, as a standard for good taste and source of scientific and logical axioms, and disapprovingly, as equivalent to vulgar prejudice and superstition. The interplay between the meanings has come to be particularly notable in English, as opposed to other western European languages, and the English term has become international. All these meanings of "common sense", including the everyday ones, are interconnected in a complex history and have evolved during important political and philosophical debates in modern Western civilisation, notably concerning science, politics and economics. Just like the everyday meaning, both of these refer to a type of basic awareness and ability to judge that most people are expected to share naturally, even if they cannot explain why. The second special use of the term is Roman-influenced and is used for the natural human sensitivity for other humans and the community. This common sense is distinct from basic sensory perception and from human rational thought, but cooperates with both. One is a capability of the animal soul ( ψῡχή, psūkhḗ) proposed by Aristotle, which enables different individual senses to collectively perceive the characteristics of physical things such as movement and size, which all physical things have in different combinations, allowing people and other animals to distinguish and identify physical things. "Common sense" also has at least two specifically philosophical meanings. In his scheme, only humans have real reasoned thinking ( νοεῖν, noeîn), which takes them beyond their common sense. Aristotle, the first person known to have discussed "common sense", described it as the ability with which animals (including humans) process sense-perceptions, memories and imagination ( φρονεῖν, phroneîn) in order to reach many types of basic judgments.