'Bestimmung' e 'Beruf' in Friedrich Hölderlin e nel suo tempo. Un'analisi linguistico-semantica

The terms 'Bestimmung' and 'Beruf' play a central role in the eighteenth-century' philosophical, theological and literary German tradition as keywords for expressing the man’s place in the creation and in the society. Because of their polysemy, however, they are not always clearly distinct from one another, and this has often given rise to ambiguities and reciprocal overlaps. Yet no studies on their proximity and/or distance have been published so far. This paper aims to fill this glaring scholarly gap, focusing on the case-study of Friedrich Hölderlin (1770-1843), who used both terms and moreover coined the concept 'Dichterberuf'. Against the background of a linguistic contextualization, the paper shows how close metaphysics, theology and literature were at that time, explaining how the term 'Bestimmung' became a word applicable to the human being as such, and 'Beruf' became a word applicable to the single individual, or specific categories of individuals, with well-defined cultural, political, and social features.