Max Carl Otto was born in Zwickau, Germany in 1876. When he was five years old, his parents brought him to Wheeling, West Virginia, where he attended school through the sixth grade. At the age of sixteen, he ran off to Cinncinnati and later to Chicago, where he worked for the R.G. Dun Company. After several years of doing boys work at the Milwaukee Y.M.C.A., he felt the need for more education in order to better understand the true meaning of Christianity. He attended Carroll College in Waukesha, Wisconsin, from 1900 to 1903. In 1903 he came to the University of Wisconsin, where he majored in history under Frederick Jackson Turner and received his B.A. in 1906. He did graduate work in philosophy, and was appointed an assistant in that department in 1908, and an instructor in 1910. By the time he received his Ph.D. in 1911, contact with the thought of William James and John Dewey had made him a humanistic atheist. He became a full professor of philosophy in 1921. In 1922 he married Rhoda Owen of Milwaukee; they had a son, Owen, and a daughter, Mary.
Until his retirement in 1947, Max Otto was one of the most popular professors at the University of Wisconsin. His great originality and wide appeal stemmed from the fact that he regarded philosophy as inextricably linked with the search for a better life, concrete assistance to individuals, and social concerns. As a pragmatist and an instrumentalist, he repudiated metaphysical ideals and attempted to instill his students with a critical yet tolerant spirit and the ability to find constructive solutions for real problems. The famous philosophy course he taught from 1910 to 1936, “Man and Nature,” in which he examined the impact of theories of evolution on man's concept of himself, aroused great controversy. Max Otto became the target for the attacks of those outraged by his atheism, pacifism, and defense of academic freedom, notably many religious leaders in 1915 and 1916 and the politician John B. Chapple in 1932.
Max Otto expounded his ideas of philosophy's relevance and human possibilities in three books: Things and Ideals (1924), Natural Laws and Human Hopes (1926), and The Human Enterprise (1940). In addition to a large output of articles, he collaborated in Is There a God?, a debate first published in The Christian Century, a volume for William James' centennial in 1942, and Philosophy in American Education (1945), a report by a commission appointed by the American Philosophical Association.
His achievements were honored at a Jubilee Dinner on the occasion of his retirement in 1947. He died in Madison in 1968.
References:
- Burkhardt, Frederick, ed. The Cleavage in Our Culture: Studies in Scientific Humanism in Honor of Max Otto, Boston, Massachusetts: Beacon Press, 1952.
- Wilder, Amos Tappan, “The Joint-Venturer,” an unpublished M.A. thesis at the University of Wisconsin, 1967.
