Niels Treschow, the Norwegian philosopher, defended a monism strongly influenced by Benedict de Spinoza and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Treschow was born at Drammen, Norway. He studied at the University of Copenhagen, where he became a professor in 1803. In 1813 he left Denmark to become the first professor of philosophy at the University of Oslo, but he held the post for only one year before entering government service.

Treschow's philosophical views are based on an idea of the unity of all things and on a concept of God similar to that of Spinoza. However, Treschow wanted to combine the idea of God's immanence, the idea that God is in all things, with the idea of God's transcendence, the idea that God is above all things. God is not the unity of all things but rather that which makes all things into a unity; as such, God...