Charlotte Alderwick presents Schelling’s ontology as fundamentally power-based. She demonstrates that this ontology enables his unique conception of human freedom outlined in the ‘Freedom’ essay. This distinctive reading demonstrates that Schelling’s power-based ontology can usefully problematise and supplement contemporary work on power-based ontologies. First, where current work focuses on powers in relation to specific areas of metaphysics, Schelling provides a holistic picture, encompassing these areas into a single ontological story. Secondly, engagement with Schelling’s work points to problems (and to possible solutions) that will arise for any power-based metaphysics, but have not been examined in the literature.