Abstract

The article is about a course of dialectic in Latin language that Pierre Prevost (1751-1839) had prepared for the use of the students of the Académie de Genève. This document testifies to the reception of the Scottish philosophy, especially of Reid, by Prevost. On the model of the Logique de Port-Royal the course is articulated in a part on the art of exposing truths already reached (the dialectic properly speaking: ideas, judgements, reasoning) and in a part on the discovery of new truths (the logic: truth, error and method). It is especially in this second part, under the rubrics of truth and error, that Reid’s influence is to be found: the criterion of truth is common sense, which bases certainty and recognizes the evidence; errors stem from the limits of common sense.