Thanks for the extra context. I remain unconvinced though. I could imagine situation in which my capacity for willing could be greater, it could for instance, be transparent to me how it is that I choose to do something or not do something. Even something as simple as raising my arm, is shrouded in mystery to me, I have no clue how I actually do it, even though I can, I don't know how I can.

Alternatively, my will could have the power to move objects beyond my body - surely God has such powers. And so on.

The ability of man to do whatever he wills to do is limited only by the limits of our knowledge. It is in this sense that the will is more extensive than the intellect. Descartes' will is for man to do whatever he wills to do, and this is accomplished by the increase his increase in knowledge. — Fooloso4

In the end, it seems to me that knowledge provides better information on which to make a better informed decision. A man could do whatever he wills, but If I compare that to an idea - say reading a novel or thinking about the weather, it seems to me to be far more intricate and complex than the will.

Unless, of course, I am misreading or misunderstanding some aspect of the will, as Descartes conceives it.

Part of what makes this interesting is that the force that math has to constrain us (because it is true, independent of who is doing it) is not the same as the shame, confusion, or unintelligibility that may persuade us to take a certain action, but does not have the same force upon us, on our will. — Antony Nickles

Sure, outside of his thought experiments, to deny basic mathematical outcomes is hard to imagine. Maybe a crazy person would say that 2+2=5, but to believe it, is hard to grasp, for me at least.

On the other hand, most of the time, mathematical results are of little to no significance.

That actions you have been doing all along can suddenly have distinctions and rationale that you had not considered, but that, when you do, causes you to acknowledge the truth of it; part awe in its being there already, and part uncanny that it is not always apparent. — Antony Nickles

That's a good description.

I believe he says God is more certain than math.

But, you tell me when you are done with the section.

…most of the time, mathematical results are of little to no significance — Manuel

But it is the type of certainty that math has that matters: predictable, dependable, extendable to all applications, abstract from context, separate from human fallibility, rule-bound, complete, universal—in a word, perfect. Math is significant because it can find a solution for a future occurrence; it is the power behind technology, and, to an extent, the method of science.

I remain unconvinced though. — Manuel

I agree that the will is problematic in ways that Descartes does not acknowledge.

In the end, it seems to me that knowledge provides better information on which to make a better informed decision. — Manuel

This is why he argues for willfully setting limits to the will. What he identifies as the problem:

When I look more closely into these errors of mine, I discover that they have two co-operating causes – my faculty of knowledge and my faculty of choice or freedom of the will. My errors, that is, depend on both (a) my intellect and (b) my will.

(Fourth Meditation)

contains the solution to the problem. The faculty of knowledge and faculty of choice must co-operate in the right way. The will must be restrained when it wills things it does not properly understand.

There is, however, another side to this. We get some sense of this when we look again at his provisional morality:

In the Discourse on Method Descartes presents his "provisional morality".

"My third maxim was to try always to master myself rather than fortune, and to change my desires rather than the order of the world."

It is provisional because his method will allow man to master fortune. Man will no longer have to accept things the way they are. Descartes method of reason is, as he says in the Meditations, the Archimedean point from which he can move the world. — Fooloso4

The desire to master fortune comes from the will, but to accomplish it requires the intellect. It is by the use of reason that he can move the world, but it is by the will that he seeks to do so. The will is without limits in that there is nothing but the will itself that limits what we want. It is provisionally necessary to change our desires because we cannot accomplish all that we desire.

But it is Descartes' ambition to master fortune. Knowledge and will work together not simply to understand the world as it is but to transform it into what it could be. Knowledge provides the ground and the will the ambition and determination to build.

This is a theme that educated men of that time would have been familiar with:

And they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks and fire them thoroughly.” And they had brick for stone and bitumen for mortar. Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves; otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.” The Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which mortals had built. And the Lord said, “Look, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language there, so that they will not understand one another’s speech.”

(Genesis 11:3-7, emphasis added)

To state it plainly, Descartes, Bacon, and others set the will of man against the will of God. The will of man to once again do whatever it is they will to do.

I believe he says God is more certain than math. — Manuel

In the fifth meditation he reverses the order he had claimed for grounding certainty:

"I remember, too, that even back in the times when the objects of the senses held my attention, I regarded the clearly apprehended propositions of pure mathematics – including arithmetic and geometry – as the most certain of all.
...
I understand from this idea that it belongs to God’s nature that he always exists. This understanding is just as clear and distinct as what is involved in mathematical proofs of the properties of shapes and numbers." — Fooloso4

That's an interesting inversion. I once thought, though am not longer certain, that it was hard to justify math, that is, not so much the results of elementary problems, 2+2=4 and so on, but the very foundations, what enables me to justify the postulation of "1" or any number?

But it's given in our minds/brain somehow.

As for the will, if the goal is right or correct moral judgments, that limits of focuses the intellect on morality. But there is a lot more to consider than morality, in mental life in general.

As for the will, if the goal is right or correct moral judgments, that limits of focuses the intellect on morality. But there is a lot more to consider than morality, in mental life in general. — Manuel

It is not clear to me what you are saying.

There is, however, another side to this. We get some sense of this when we look again at his provisional morality:

In the Discourse on Method Descartes presents his "provisional morality".

"My third maxim was to try always to master myself rather than fortune, and to change my desires rather than the order of the world."

It is provisional because his method will allow man to master fortune. Man will no longer have to accept things the way they are. Descartes method of reason is, as he says in the Meditations, the Archimedean point from which he can move the world. — Fooloso4

The desire to master fortune comes from the will, but to accomplish it requires the intellect. It is by the use of reason that he can move the world, but it is by the will that he seeks to do so. The will is without limits in that there is nothing but the will itself that limits what we want. It is provisionally necessary to change our desires because we cannot accomplish all that we desire.

But it is Descartes' ambition to master fortune. Knowledge and will work together not simply to understand the world as it is but to transform it into what it could be. Knowledge provides the ground and the will the ambition and determination to build. — Fooloso4

Apologies for my lack of clarity. These comments suggest to me that he seeking to master his fortune, that is, control his own desires - which is what he has control over after all, we cannot will to change the world, we can will to change ourselves, in order to try and have an effect on the world, however small this change may be.

These sound to me to be strongly inclined to moral considerations, I master my will in order to change my desires so as to make them adequate for the task at hand. This is what I ought to do.

This is all well and good and true. But it seems to me as if, even taking all of this into account, and granting the will the scope Descartes gives it, still falls short of his original statement, or at least, the statement under contention, that the will is wider than the intellect.

I just see much more aspects to the intellect than I do to the will, there are more elements to it that "merely" doing this or doing that, or not doing anything. I say no more than this, it's my only doubt, pardon the pun.

These sound to me to be strongly inclined to moral considerations, I master my will in order to change my desires so as to make them adequate for the task at hand. This is what I ought to do. — Manuel

I don't think Descartes is saying the will can be mastered. The reason he cannot experience the difference between his will and that of God's is because he can only directly know his own freedom. That freedom does include selecting between options that range from the indifferent to the most important:

For although the faculty of willing is incomparably greater in God than it is in me, both by virtue of the knowledge and power that are joined to it and that render it more resolute and efficacious and by virtue of its object inasmuch as the divine will stretches over a greater number of things, nevertheless, when viewed in itself formally and precisely, God’s faculty of willing does not appear to be any greater. This is owing to the fact that willing is merely a matter of being able to do or not do the same thing, that is, of being able to affirm or deny, to pursue or to shun; or better still, the will consists solely in the fact that when something is proposed to us by our intellect either to affirm or deny, to pursue or to shun, we are moved in such a way that we sense that we are determined to it by no external force. In order to be free I need not be capable of being moved in each direction; on the contrary, the more I am inclined toward one direction—either because I clearly understand that there is in it an aspect of the good and the true, or because God has thus disposed the inner recesses of my thought—the more freely do I choose that direction. Nor indeed does divine grace or natural knowledge ever diminish one’s freedom; rather, they increase and strengthen it. However, the indifference that I experience when there is no reason moving me more in one direction than in another is the lowest grade of freedom; it is indicative not of any perfection in freedom, but rather of a defect, that is, a certain negation in knowledge. Were I always to see clearly what is true and good, I would never deliberate about what is to be judged or chosen. — ibid. Fourth Meditation page 38

which is what he has control over after all, we cannot will to change the world, we can will to change ourselves, in order to try and have an effect on the world, however small this change may be. — Manuel

The "increase in natural knowledge" increases our power and effect upon the world.

For although the faculty of willing is incomparably greater in God than it is in me, both by virtue of the knowledge and power that are joined to it and that render it more resolute and efficacious and by virtue of its object inasmuch as the divine will stretches over a greater number of things, nevertheless, when viewed in itself formally and precisely, God’s faculty of willing does not appear to be any greater. This is owing to the fact that willing is merely a matter of being able to do or not do the same thing, that is, of being able to affirm or deny, to pursue or to shun; or better still, the will consists solely in the fact that when something is proposed to us by our intellect either to affirm or deny, to pursue or to shun, we are moved in such a way that we sense that we are determined to it by no external force. — ibid. Fourth Meditation page 38

That's my issue with it, he says this is what the will consists of.

But why should this be the total extent of the will? We have this capacity in dramatically larger proportion than other animals, if it can be said they have will at all. Maybe they have minimal will. A dog can be "taught" not to eat a treat until the owner says so. Maybe this is minimal will, maybe not.

But it's not inconceivable to me that another even more intelligent species could have dramatically stronger capacity of will compared to us. What it would look like, I cannot exactly say, but, I don't think it can be ruled out.

Just because we can't conceive of a greater capacity for willing, does it mean that it cannot exist, at least in principle.

we cannot will to change the world — Manuel

But that is what we do! It is not the will alone but the will combined with the intellect and body, that is, human beings who do this.

That modern, technologically and scientifically advancing man has changed the world and continues to do so it obvious. He calls his morality provisional because he is on the forefront of these advances in the power of what we are able to do. The will plays a central role because human beings are driven by the will for improvement in our conditions. If man can improve the conditions of his life he no longer has to accept the idea that he is powerless to do so. As @Paine has pointed out, and as Descartes recognized in a way the Stoics did not, knowledge is power.

Descartes is saying he is not in a position to compare "wills" of beings as a capacity in the way differences in knowledge and ability can be. As a freedom of choice, the experience between selecting to do or not do, to affirm or not affirm any option is one that does not feel forced upon him by an exterior cause. In the theological registers Descartes was working within, that freedom of choice was related to the sin of choosing to turn away from God. From Augustine to Anselm, the freedom is a critical moment where we can err. Descartes is making a striking move by combining the choosing between true and false ideas and good and bad actions as instances of one "will." While Anselm may not approve this expression as a matter of faith, I think he would not object to:

Nor indeed does divine grace or natural knowledge ever diminish one’s freedom; rather, they increase and strengthen it. However, the indifference that I experience when there is no reason moving me more in one direction than in another is the lowest grade of freedom; it is indicative not of any perfection in freedom, but rather of a defect, that is, a certain negation in knowledge. — ibid. Fourth Meditation page 38

This approach does call for asking what freedom of choice is and what counts as an external cause. Spinoza's Ethics got to work with calling the first an illusion and the second a category mistake.

Interesting replies.

My concern and interest here specifically is in the claim that the will is broader than the intellect. I'm questioning if that follows. In as much as we can (which is not trivial) differentiate mental faculties "the will" from "the intellect", it either is the case that the will is broader, or it isn't.

Then again, it could be that the distinction made between the two today can't be made too explicit.

That there are enormous consequences from having freedom of the will, (unless you are a determinist), is clear, we just look at the development of history.

I could very well be hyper-focusing on a topic that deviates from the goal of the Meditations. But again, my issue here is narrow.

It's a different thing if some of you believe that what Descartes said is correct. If it is, then that's fine. I wouldn't want this to be an impediment to the larger discussion.

The "increase in natural knowledge" increases our power and effect upon the world. — Paine

Missed this in my last reply. Sure, I don't debate or doubt that. My question is, do all aspects of natural knowledge play a role in the will?

Maybe it would help if you gave a definition of the will as expressed by a philosophy that rings true for you. The concept has been approached many different ways and those ways have prompted very different 'psychological' perspectives.

I am reading Descartes as saying will is freedom of choice rather than him speaking of " having freedom of the will. The latter suggests there could be an unfree will. In this context, I read that as a contradiction in terms.

My question is, do all aspects of natural knowledge play a role in the will? — Manuel

I think that D is saying it will always help in making better choices but the inclusion of 'divine grace' in the statement is important too. We did not give ourselves freedom of choice nor what is our Good. The freedom of choice is a condition discovered through the limits of our intellect:

Were I always to see clearly what is true and good, I would never deliberate about what is to be judged or chosen. — ibid. Fourth Meditation page 38

I am reading Descartes as saying will is freedom of choice — Paine

I've been following the discussion (without rereading the text, else I'd contribute) and this is exactly what I've gotten from the quotes posted. Will is the capacity to choose.

Were I always to see clearly what is true and good, I would never deliberate about what is to be judged or chosen. — ibid. Fourth Meditation page 38

And this very specifically says "I would not deliberate" rather than saying, "I would have no choice." There is a tradition of equating sin with error, simply mistaking the bad for the good. But Lucifer chose, knowing full well he was choosing the bad. Descartes sees here, correctly it would seem, a power greater than which none can be conceived, in its own sphere far greater than the intellect is in the field of knowledge. You do not get to choose which options are open to you; you do not get to choose that all your goals be perfectly realized; you do not get to choose even to stick by your decisions and carry them out; but the power of choice itself stands unopposed.

↪Manuel
Maybe it would help if you gave a definition of the will as expressed by a philosophy that rings true for you. The concept has been approached many different ways and those ways have prompted very different 'psychological' perspectives.

I am reading Descartes as saying will is freedom of choice rather than him speaking of " having freedom of the will. The latter suggests there could be an unfree will. In this context, I read that as a contradiction in terms. — Paine

I'd define will as the ability to do or not to do something, this can range from trivial things like lifting a finger, to participating in protests and everything in between.

Hmmm. For Descartes having will at all is freedom of choice, I don't have much of an issue with that definition, save minor caveats than needn't be raised.

I suppose I unconsciously had Schopenhauer in mind, as when he says "Man can do what he wills, but cannot will what he wills." But he was a determinist.

I think that D is saying it will always help in making better choices but the inclusion of 'divine grace' in the statement is important too. We did not give ourselves freedom of choice nor what is our Good. The freedom of choice is a condition discovered through the limits of our intellect:

Were I always to see clearly what is true and good, I would never deliberate about what is to be judged or chosen.
— ibid. Fourth Meditation page 38 — Paine

That's a very thorny issue. It enters into the whole "causa sui" debate, of whether it is possible for one to be the cause of one's action. If the will is free, as I think it is, then it's possible.

Now, if my definition is not too problematic, then we can do, or not do something. With the intellect we judge, discern, reason, suppose, contemplate, compare, distinguish, evaluate, consider, combine, etc., etc.

That seems to be quite larger in scope than doing or not doing something. Granted, the latter is very important, no doubt about that.

Now, if my definition is not too problematic, then we can do, or not do something. With the intellect we judge, discern, reason, suppose, contemplate, compare, distinguish, evaluate, consider, combine, etc., etc. — Manuel

That either/or always happens in the context of intellect:

This is owing to the fact that willing is merely a matter of being able to do or not do the same thing, that is, of being able to affirm or deny, to pursue or to shun; or better still, the will consists solely in the fact that when something is proposed to us by our intellect either to affirm or deny, to pursue or to shun, we are moved in such a way that we sense that we are determined to it by no external force. — ibid. Fourth Meditation page 38

For Descartes, 'modes of thought' include all the processes we experience from sensation, to emotion, to conceptual reasoning, and so on. The either/or of choosing happens in the case of the least important matters up to the most important decisions. That is where the element of 'indifference' is seen in relation to orders of freedom:

However, the indifference that I experience when there is no reason moving me more in one direction than in another is the lowest grade of freedom; it is indicative not of any perfection in freedom, but rather of a defect, that is, a certain negation in knowledge — ibid. Fourth Meditation page 38

All I'm saying is that I perceive that in a single mental act, or object of knowledge, there is more at play than the will.

I don't have anything against the will, nor is it trivial or unimportant or of little consequence.

If you want to add something, please do, you certainly know Descartes very well.

I'll read whatever you say, as there is plenty more here to consider.

All I'm saying is that I perceive that in a single mental act, or object of knowledge, there is more at play than the will. — Manuel

I mean to say that Descartes would largely agree. The greater degrees of freedom come from knowing more and resisting acting stupidly as a consequence. I don't understand how you see the will as being over-determined in the Meditations.

I suppose I unconsciously had Schopenhauer in mind, as when he says "Man can do what he wills, but cannot will what he wills." But he was a determinist. — Manuel

I don't know how Descartes would respond to that. He might agree to some extent. Spinoza denied free will but for different reasons than Schopenhauer did. Spinoza said it was cheeky to say our acts of deliberation were like what God did. We deliberate about what will best serve our ends. Spinoza accepted that it was natural that we pursued those ends. He objected to the idea that we were breaking a chain of causality by doing so. Having a God who would interrupt the program at any time was declared capricious and weird from the perspective of a natural world.

Schopenhauer introduced a more thorough going skepticism regarding the idea of an ordered universe which would have been nonsense from Spinoza's point of view. It seems determinism is as tricky as freedom.

If you want to add something, please do, you certainly know Descartes very well. — Manuel

Well, I have had to accept that I had gotten it wrong several times during this OP. There are plenty of opportunities to fail again.

Maybe it would help if you gave a definition of the will as expressed by a philosophy that rings true for you. The concept has been approached many different ways and those ways have prompted very different 'psychological' perspectives. — Paine

Would you point at one or more of the psychological perspectives that you see see as most worthy of consideration? I'd be interested in looking into some of them.

I have my own neuropsych perspective on the subject, and would be interested in what others who have thought seriously about the subject have to say.

I'd define will as the ability to do or not to do something, this can range from trivial things like lifting a finger, to participating in protests and everything in between. — Manuel

As I pointed out:

Descartes describes the will in two ways - a) freedom of choice, b) the ability to do or not do something. The shift from the former to the latter is significant. — Fooloso4

It is in the first sense, of what I choose or want or desire or pursue, that the will is unlimited. The second sense, as you say, is more problematic. It is here that the will and intellect must work together. But look at those things he lists as something one is able to do:

The will is simply one’s ability to do or not do something – to accept or reject a proposition, to pursue a goal or avoid something.

It should also be noted that he does not say the will's ability but "one's ability". Although in the fourth meditation he considers the will and the intellect separately, they are:

... co-operating causes ...

Although the philosophers have emphasized God's intellect there is an older tradition that makes God's will central.

Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Contrary to this Descartes asserts: my will be done on earth. If nature is the work of God then the conquest of nature seems to be contrary to God's will. If sickness is the will of God then medicine, which Descartes took a keen interest in, is against the will of God. This is still an issue today, as can be seen in protests against technological advancements for "playing God".

If sickness is the will of God then medicine, which Descartes took a keen interest in, is against the will of God. . — Fooloso4

Which part of the Meditations inspires you to suggest this?

Not one part but piecing together several things.

There is an ancient expression, still common today, that all that happens is God 's will. If one is sick that is God's will. If one gets well it is God 's will.

In the Sixth Meditation:

A sick man is one of God’s creatures just as a healthy one is

Given Descartes equating creation and preservation, the sick man is not simply God's creature in the sense of a creature who happens to be sick, but a creature who is preserved in sickness by God.

In the Fourth Meditation he says:

In estimating whether God’s works are perfect, we should look at the universe as a whole, not at created things one by one. Something that might seem very imperfect if it existed on its own has a function in relation to the rest of the universe, and may be perfect when seen in that light.

He rejects the argument that sickness is contrary to God's will because sickness is an imperfection and God makes nothing that is not perfect.

His interest in medicine is well documented. His approach was integrated with the rest of his philosophy.

René Descartes repeatedly wrote that a better medical practice was a major aim of his philosophical enterprise. — Steven Shapin, Descartes the Doctor:Rationalism and its Therapies

In his provisional code of morals (Discourse on Method, part lll) he says:

... making, so to speak, a virtue of necessity, we shall no more desire health in disease, or freedom in imprisonment, than we now do bodies incorruptible as diamonds, or the wings of birds to fly with.

He rejected the will or desire for health in disease because such a thing was not possible. But with the advances in medicine at that time the need to deny the desire for health looked like it would become increasingly unnecessary. The world as given to us by God would no longer be a prison.

So maybe influenced by Renaissance humanism?

I think you know much more about Renaissance humanism than I. What influences from Renaissance humanism do you see?

Taking such a broad view that would encompass ancient, medieval, and modern points of view is a project beyond the scope of my tiny mind and would call for its own discussion if it was not. But I can offer an example of how different first principles give different 'psychologies' or 'soul accounts', to translate the word from the Greek.

John Duns Scotus regarded the will to be prior to the intellect. He would have objected to the way Descartes presents them side by side in the quote above. There is a tension between the natural world and the realm of divine grace which the scholastic philosophers dealt with by explaining that the intellect is an activity of creatures as described by Aristotle. The possibility of free choice is 'unnatural' against the background of necessary processes. So, Scotus develops an idea of contingency quite at variance from Aristotle's treatment:

By contingent, I do not mean something that is not necessary, or which was not always or which was not always in existence, but something whose opposite could have occurred at the time that this actually did. That is why I do not say that something is contingent, but that something is caused contingently. — Quoted from Arendt, will provide source when reunited with my Scotus book.

It has been more than a decade since I last wrestled with the text. This discussion encourages me to give it another go. In the meantime, I will appeal to a secondary source who I think gets at the consequences of free choice being accepted as prior to intellect:

When Scotus rejects the idea that will is merely intellectual appetite, he is saying that there is something fundamentally wrong with eudaimonistic ethics. Morality is not tied to human flourishing at all. For it is Scotus’s fundamental conviction that morality is impossible without libertarian freedom, and since he sees no way for there to be libertarian freedom on Aquinas’s eudaimonistic understanding of ethics, Aquinas’s understanding must be rejected. And just as Aquinas’s conception of the will was tailor-made to suit his eudaimonistic conception of morality, Scotus’s conception of the will is tailor-made to suit his anti-eudaimonistic conception of morality. It’s not merely that he thinks there can be no genuine freedom in mere intellectual appetite. It’s also that he rejects the idea that moral norms are intimately bound up with human nature and human happiness. The fact that God creates human beings with a certain kind of nature does not require God to command or forbid the actions that he in fact commanded or forbade. The actions he commands are not necessary for our happiness, and the actions he forbids are not incompatible with our happiness. Now if the will were merely intellectual appetite—that is, if it were aimed solely at happiness—we would not be able to choose in accordance with the moral law, since the moral law itself is not determined by any considerations about human happiness. So Scotus relegates concerns about happiness to the affectio commodi and assigns whatever is properly moral to the other affection, the affectio iustitiae. — Thomas Williams, SEP article

Oh sure. And as suggested by you implicitly, much of this depends on what one takes "God" to imply or cover. If it is belonging to the Abrahamic tradition, then obviously giving medicine to a sick person would be contrary to God's plan.

Of course, if one takes God to be somewhat akin to what Plotinus did, then medicine is not a problem.

You and Paine made me have a mini panic (don't worry these are good) and I started reading (skimming to be honest) some of the classics on "free will", Locke and Hume, but I thought Locke's take on the will to be quite more intuitive (if not reasonable) than Descartes.

The difficulties which one can find in his philosophy, is decently covered in the SEP.

To continue in the Cartesian tradition in a contemporary setting, we'd have to turn "God" into nature, and proceed from that, it seems to me.

If it is belonging to the Abrahamic tradition ... — Manuel

I think he is addressing a predominantly Christian audience, starting with the dedication. Some scholars have made a connection between Descartes and Plotinus, but I have not looked into this.

To continue in the Cartesian tradition in a contemporary setting, we'd have to turn "God" into nature — Manuel

If I understand him correctly, this is the move Spinoza makes. But I think Descartes makes a distinction between God and His work.

I think you know much more about Renaissance humanism than I. What influences from Renaissance humanism do you see? — Fooloso4

I don't know a whole lot about it. I've just been struggling to place Descartes in a historical context since we started reading this. I don't think I understood his historical significance as well as I thought. For instance, I'm still trying to understand his relationship with Newton and Hobbes.

A broad, maybe faulty notion about the Renaissance is that it's when our present conception of individuality emerged. The idea is that during the feudal period there wasn't enough community to provide a backdrop for individuality. Later, during the city building era, the drive to create community beyond the manors resulted in super-identities that eclipsed individuality.

Around the Renaissance and Reformation, a more mature social setting appeared, allowing stable bases for individuality: you weren't just a serf, you weren't just a member of the baker's guild, you were a distinct individual in your own right, which would have been a position formerly only held by the monarch and maybe a few aristocrats.

The events leading up to the Renaissance created the conditions for intellectuals like Descartes, Newton and Hobbes, the point being that humanism wasn't invented by Descartes, but rather he was reinforcing a trend that was already in motion in the world around him.

Hello from the future!

He does not doubt that there are: — Fooloso4

But then in later Meditations he does indeed, so then he gives arguments for the existence of the outside world (not of material things yet). One of the arguments is the origins of his ideas, which is also one of his arguments for God.

But how do I know that He has not brought it to pass that there is no earth, no heaven, no extended body, no magnitude, no place[...]

It is only then later that he tries to prove whether there are res extensae.

In the third meditation we see an argument that resembles what is said in the quoted paragraphy from the 1st Med., that if I don't see the objective reality of an idea anywhere (it is not me) in me, either formally (it exists as a thing, like thoughts) or eminently (it is less perfect than me, so it can extrapolated from), the outside world must exist so that there is something to cause that idea.

However, just one/two pages later, he throws that out:

For [even] when I think that a stone is a substance, or at least a thing capable of existing of itself, and that I am a substance also, although I conceive that I am a thing that thinks and not one that is extended, and that the stone on the other hand is an extended thing which does not think, and that thus there is a notable difference between the two conceptions—they seem, nevertheless, to agree in this, that both represent substances. In the same way, when I perceive that I now exist and further recollect that I have in former times existed, and when I remember that I have various thoughts of which I can recognize the number, I acquire ideas of duration and number which I can afterwards transfer to any object that I please. But as to all the other qualities of which the ideas of corporeal things are composed, to wit, extension, figure, situation and motion, it is true that they are not formally in me, since I am only a thing that thinks; but because they are merely certain modes of substance (and so to speak the way in which corporeal substance appears to us) and because I myself am also a substance, it would seem that they might be contained in me eminently.

And:

Hence there remains only the idea of God

I personally don't fully agree with the argument above; not with the conclusion, but with the way it is presented. Res extensa and res cogitans have different attributes, and so have different modes. It is a possibility that a res cogitans is born ex nihilo with the idea of extension (and in which case that idea of extension would not represent anything real); but without being so, it could not develop it by itself, as it does not have extension in itself. For the ideas to be contained in me, they would have to be simply a fortuitous result of the operations of my mind as it was born, in which case they are contained formally, not eminently.

It is also through God that Descartes "proves" in the 6th Med. that there is an outside world. But it has several problems.

On one kind of interpretation, Descartes relaxes his epistemic standards in the Sixth Meditation. He no longer insists on perfect knowledge, now settling for probabilistic arguments. — SEP's Descartes' Epistemology

So perhaps Descartes is never fully convinced that there is an outside world — I have some more reading to do to see if he says otherwise somewhere else. But he is not a skeptic, he does not need to be, he only finds many strong arguments for why there is an outside world.

As a curiosity, the bit on wax on the 2nd Med. seems to be somewhat of a proof of the outside world:

Is it not that I imagine that this piece of wax being round is capable of becoming square and of passing from a square to a triangular figure? No, certainly it is not that, since I imagine it admits of an infinitude of similar changes, and I nevertheless do not know how to compass the infinitude by my imagination, and consequently this conception which I have of the wax is not brought about by the faculty of imagination.

A very muddy, but wonderful book.