Descartes and Nietzsche both state with the individual, but in different ways and senses. Descartes starts his investigation of what can be known with certainty with the thought experiments of the individual, namely, the individual perceiver and thinker, namely, himself. Nietzsche, is concerned with himself as an author, he wrote his own autobiography and titled it Ecce Homo, meaning "behold, the Man" using a title sometimes used in biographies of Jesus, and also considers his Overman as an individual and not as being a group or class.
             Descartes has other things in mind and considers the human being in quite different terms. To Descartes the human individual is one with a body that has extension in space as its basic material property, but, more importantly. As a mind, in the sense of being one who thinks and doubts. This is something that one cannot consistently doubt, in contrast to what one senses or observes, and so the thinking self becomes the basic knowing entity, the basis of certainty in his knowledge. What is presented as clearly and distinctly to the self as its own existence is accepted as true. Yet the human self is finite in intellect though the will is not limited, or as limited, and Descartes takes this as being the cause of error, that one wills to know more than what one can know. Yet one has an idea of God which, since one is finite, must come from an infinite source, namely, God himself.
             Nietzsche sees human beings as of two types, the lesser, uncreative ones and the superior individuals who are creative and use the resources they, as individuals, can exploit, including lesser folk, to express what they will to create. Nietzsche sees the unlimited individual will of the superior individual, the "Ubermensch," as what is best in him. Descartes sees the individual human will as what is a problem for him in that it is the unlimited will that is the source of error.
             Augustine held th...