A Commitment to Life
Even when his body was struggling to survive, Robert Makus never stopped living. The associate professor of philosophy followed a packed schedule, hosting philosophical teas with students, where tea and cookies went along with an informal discussion of current events. In the last few months, one student at the teas said he noticed Makus rubbing his legs as if to ease them but Makus never spoke about pain. His classes continued without letup, although his dialysis appointments for kidney failure had to be increased to five times a week. If colleagues knew about his weak heart, they did not see any change in his thoughtfulness during department meetings or in his warm and personal manner.
“He was a really courageous guy—the doctor said (his condition) floors some people but he treated it as a mere inconvenience,” said Thomas Cavanaugh, associate professor of philosophy. “He gave above and beyond a full load of service, teaching, and research.”
A survivor of testicular cancer at age 25, Makus eventually lost use of both his kidneys, despite a failed transplantation attempt in the spring of 1998. In an effort to fortify his heart by replacing a weak valve, Makus, 51, underwent open-heart surgery on July 2. He fell into a coma shortly afterward and died on July 14 at 1:32 a.m. as a result of complications.
“My father always believed he was in control of his illness and therefore his life, and death. He certainly lived that way and he died that way, too,” said Eli Makus, Robert’s son. “He seemed to hold on until the entire family was gathered and each had time to pay their last respects. He died late at night, which seemed fitting. He loved working into the early morning hours—any other night he would have been found in his study writing and thinking while smoking his favorite pipe.”
More than 150 mourners, including about 20 students, attended the funeral service, with Makus’s brother, Rev. Bud Makus, presiding. Mourners described Robert Makus’s uncommon attentiveness to other people, his gentleness, and good humor.
“He said philosophers are lucky when they’re facing death, because then they can think about it,’” said David Stump, associate professor of philosophy and chair of the philosophy department.
“He was the pied piper of the department,” said Barbara MacKinnon, a philosophy professor and recent chair of the department who retired this year. “He had so many students who would follow him around and go to his teas and sign up for his upper-level seminars, even for no credit. You know what drew students to him? He was so concerned with every person.”
Gideon Blumstein, who took five of Makus’s courses before graduating from USF last spring, said Makus was always a strict grader but a humane teacher. “In class, he would ask everyone to talk; he’d make sure everyone understood,” Blumstein said. “He always had a sense of humor. He always had a smile on his face and he would laugh out loud.”
Makus had many careers before joining academia. He mined gold in northeastern Washington in his late twenties, where he also worked as a logger and hog farmer. He completed his doctorate in hermeneutics (philosophy and literature) at Penn State University in 1988. He taught philosophy at California State University, Hayward and at San Francisco’s Academy of Art College before coming to USF in 1994. He published numerous articles in his field, and recently completed a book on philosophy in business inspired by Nietszche. He had just completed a manuscript for a book on living with illness titled, Make Your Illness an Asset: How to Live Well When You Are Really Sick, that his family hopes to publish.
That book grew out of a personal philosophy to live spiritually and emotionally committed. “If you are engaged in the world you are healthy, regardless of how well your body operates or how well it feels,” Makus wrote in his manuscript. “We are healthy and successful to the degree that we are involved in caring about other people. Care is what binds us to the world.”
Blumstein said it was a message Makus emphasized in his teaching. “Bob would talk about how Jesus cared about 12 people very seriously and look what could happen,” Blumstein said. “His idea was, all you have to do is care about a few people severely and then you can change the world."
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