German philosopher and critic of aesthetics and literature who, after embracing the philosophical school of Immanuel Kant (Kant, Immanuel), later criticized it while using its analytic method; he also deeply influenced German and Italian idealism (the view that reality is essentially the embodiment of ideas).

After studying law at the University of Göttingen, Bouterwek became an exponent of Kantian philosophy, expressing it in Aphorismen, den Freunden der Vernunftkritik nach kantischer Lehre vorgelegt (1793; “Aphorisms, to Friends of the Critique of Reason According to Kantian Doctrine”). Appointed professor of philosophy at the University of Göttingen in 1797, he composed Ideen zu einer allegemeinen Apodiktik (1799; “Ideas for a General Apodictic”), a more important Kantian mode delineating ideas of philosophical certainty.

Bouterwek was dissatisfied, however, with the formalism of Kant's doctrine, and he attacked Kantian logic for producing only hypothetical conclusions. Inclining to the views of Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, Bouterwek argued that philosophical certainty is based exclusively on the unique reality of man's insight into ultimate being.

Bouterwek's aesthetic philosophy was also affected by his revision of Kantianism. For him beauty was a preanalytic intuition that based standards for aesthetic judgment on a single, transcendent beauty resembling a “mystical Idea.” Influenced further by the aesthetics of Jean Paul, he viewed poetry as the theoretical basis for all the arts.

Bouterwek's principal writings, embodying his philosophical development, include Geschichte der neueren Poesie und Beredsamkeit, 12 vol. (1801–19; “The History of Modern Poetry and Rhetoric”); Religion und Vernunft (1824; “Religion and Reason”), which explains his moderate rationalism as distinct from Kant's; Lehrbuch der philosophischen Wissenschaften (1813; “Principles of Philosophical Research”); and Kleine Schriften (1818; “Brief Writings”), of value for its biographical data.