But Man cannot really become immortal. It is the being of what is negated that passes into the negation and realizes its result. Thus, by (actively) negating the real natural World, Man can create a historical or human ("technical") World, which is just as real, although real in a different way. But death is pure Nothingness, and it subsists only as concept of death (= presence of the absence of life). Now, by negating a concept, one only manages to create another concept. Hence Man who negates his death can only "imagine" himself immortal: he can only believe in his "eternal" life or his "resurrection," but he cannot really live his imaginary "afterlife." But this faith, whose counterpart and origin are the faculty of freely bringing about one's death, also distinguishes Man from animal. Man is not only the sole living being which knows that it must die and which can freely bring about its death: he is also the only one which can aspire to immortality and believe in it more or less firmly.

Alexandre Kojève, Introduction to the Reading of Hegel (Cornell University Press, 1980) p. 256