The post-idealist reception of Schelling is grouped in particular around the concepts of (living) “being-that” (Dass-Sein) and existence. These phenomena fundamentally elude the rigorism of a reason which would be all-encompassing, static, and ultimately inanimate. This article aims to shed more light on this tendency in post-idealist philosophy, which both Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) and Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) pursued in emulation of the “middle” and late Schelling, and to point out the affinities between the two thinkers. Such affinities are due not only to the fact that Kierkegaard took note of Schopenhauer, albeit critically, but also due to the movement by which both thinkers systematically dissociated themselves from idealism. Schopenhauer, the older of the two post-idealist thinkers and born only thirteen years after Schelling, is without a doubt the one who is more strongly entangled in the basic ideas of idealist philosophy. Indeed, one may go so far as to claim that he himself had an influence on Schelling’s thought after 1809. Schelling cannot simply be distinguished from the post-idealist thinkers, but rather—according to the thesis of our article—he himself prepared the transition from idealist to post-idealist philosophy, which was then merely further formulated by thinkers such as Schopenhauer and Kierkegaard. One cannot simply say, in the words of Karl Löwith, that they made a “revolutionary break in nineteenth century thought.”