This essay explores how Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Arthur Schopenhauer develop theories of the will that are in dialogue with the work of romantic-era scientists and grounded in anti-dualist conceptions of matter, yet divergent in their philosophical conclusions. Coleridge and Schopenhauer were both interested in developing a theory of life that acknowledges and incorporates the experimental findings of science, yet they insisted that scientific methods are not the sole arbiters of truth. Coleridge began by theorizing the dynamism at work in nature to formulate positive definitions of the human will, agency, freedom, and God. Schopenhauer, on the other hand, began with an unconventional theory of the materiality of the will as the foundation of all nonhuman and human life, proposing a negative definition of freedom. These contrasting accounts of will, freedom, and human life lie at the foundation of critical conceptions of modern subjectivity and selfhood.