The Philosophical Investigations into the Essence of Human Freedom (1809) of Schelling contains a meaningful confrontation with the philosophy of Spinoza. The aim of this paper is to reconstruct, in its main points, Schelling’s general criticism on Spinoza, developed at the beginning of the writing. The two major critical points of his refutation are the lack of life in Spinoza’s system and the incompleteness of its argumentative structure. This is because, according to a later judgment Schelling’s, the Ethica of Spinoza cannot really describe the life (such as endless conflict between forces) and her productivity, but on the contrary, almost as a treatise on the philosophy of late antiquity, remains merely useful in order to bear the tragedy of life.