 There looks to be a fairly stark contrast between the often melodramatic and provocative tone of Stirner’s best-known work, on the one hand, and the rather more mundane, sometimes poignant, events of his somewhat solitary life, on the other. However, commentators have frequently tried to link his life and philosophical views together. John Henry Mackay, for instance, emphasizing the “ataraxic”dimension of The Ego and Its Own, portrayed Stirner’s life as an authentic embodiment of the emotional detachment that the egoist must cultivate in order to avoid being enslaved by his own passions and commitments. Even the pathos of Stirner’s death was said to reflect the egoist’s refusal to love life, or fear death, excessively.(Mackay 1914: 212.) Such claims are not without interest, but the lack of direct evidence regarding Stirner’s own interior life makes them difficult to evaluate and endorse. 