 Schelling is one of the first philosophers seriously to begin the critique of the model of metaphysics based on the idea of true representation, a critique which can be seen as one of the key aspects of modern philosophy from Heidegger to the later Wittgenstein and beyond. He is, at the same time, unlike some of his successors, committed to an account of human reason which does not assume that reason’s incapacity to ground itself should lead to an abandonment of rationality or the reduction to reason to the exercise of power, in the manner of Nietzsche. This is one of the respects in which Schelling has again become part of contemporary philosophical debate, where the need to seek means of legitimation which do not rely on the notion of a rationality inherent in the world remains a major challenge. Above all, Schelling’s account of mind and world, particularly his insistence on the need not to limit our conception of nature to what can be objectified by scientific methods, is, in the light of the ecological crisis, proving to be more durable than his reception might until recently have suggested. The question Schelling still poses is how the capacity for expanding human knowledge and control of nature can be reconciled with sustainable ways of inhabiting that nature.