This article argues that in order to understand the motto of Cambridge platonists, "be sober and reasoable", it is necessary to replace it in the context of dietetic literature and medicine. The therapeutic power attributed to reason (in cure of religious fanatism, for example) originates in a discourse about the body, its health and its diseases. The article puts into light the close link between the philosophical reflection on the power or weakness of reason and the normative discourse of the physicians who preach moderation and warns intellectuals against an excess of abstruse and too profound use of reason. In this context, the reason appears as a double faculty, that is first as a therapeutic power and secondly as a source of phatological disorders.
Hygiene; Sobriety; Reason; English Illuminism; George Cheyne; Luigi Cornaro