BOUTERWEK, Friedrich, a German philosopher and historian of literature, was born in Lower Saxony in 1766. He was educated at Göttingen university, and seems to have contemplated joining the legal profession; but his literary inclinations proved too powerful, and he devoted himself entirely to works of poetry and romance. He published several poems, and a romance Graf Donemar. Towards 1790 he began to study with great eagerness the Kantian philosophy, and in 1791 delivered a series of lectures on that subject in Göttingen. He was dissatisfied with the Kantian system, regarding it as too formal, particularly in the department of ethics, and was soon attracted to the system of Jacobi, which appeared to give the element of real existence omitted by Kant. Bouterwek’s most important work, Idee einer allgemeinen Apodiktik, 2 vols. 1799, is deserving of serious study, both as a critique of Kantianism, and as a substantial contribution to philosophy. In 1802 he was made professor of philosophy at Göttingen, and published several valuable works, among others Aesthetik, 1806; Lehrbuch der phil. Wissenschaften, 1813; and Religion der Vernunft, 1824. During his later years Bouterwek was entirely devoted to an extensive literary work. To him had been entrusted the section cn poetry and eloquence in the great German series of histories of the sciences from the Renaissance downwards. The first volume of the Geschichte des neuern Poesie und Beredsamkeit appeared in 1805, the twelfth and last in 1815. It is a work of great research, and has very substantial merits. It is, however, somewhat unequal, the portions on German and Spanish literature being superior to any of the rest. Part of the extended work has been translated into English as a History of Spanish Literature. Bouterwek ...