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

If, then, death is a manifestation of Negativity in Men (or more exactly, a manifestation of Man's Negativity), it is a transformation of his real being into ideal concept. It is because he is mortal that Man can conceive (begreifen) of himself as he is in reality – that is, precisely as mortal: in contradistinction to animals, he thinks of himself as mortal, and therefore he thinks of his own death. Hence he can "transcend" it, if you please, and situate himself somehow beyond it; but he does this in the only way in which one can "go beyond" given-Being without sinking into pure Nothingness, namely in and by thought.

Alexandre Kojève, Introduction to the Reading of Hegel (Cornell University Press, 1980) p. 254

For History to exist, there must be not only a given reality, but also a negation of that reality and at the same time a ("sublimated") preservation of what has been negated. For only then is evolution creative; only then do a true continuity and a real progress exist in it. And this is precisely what distinguishes human History from a simple biological or "natural" evolution. Now, to preserv oneself as negated is to remember what one has been even while one is becoming radically other. It is by historical memory that Man's identity preserves itself throughout History, in spite of the auto-negations which are accomplished in it, so that he can realize himself by means of History as the integration of his contradictory past or as totality, or, better, as dialectical entity. Hence history is always a conscious and willed tradition, and all real history also manifests itself as a historiography: there is no History without conscious, lived historical memory.

Alexandre Kojève, Introduction to the Reading of Hegel (Cornell University Press, 1980) p. 232

The Concept is Time. Time in the full sense of the term – that is, a Time in which there is a Future also in the full sense – that is, a Future that will never become either present or past. Man is the empirical existence of the concept in the world. Therefore, he is the empirical existence in the world of a Future that will never become present. Now, this Future, for Man, is his death, that Future of his which will never become his present; and the only reality or real presence of this Future is the knowledge that Man has in the present of his future death. Therefore, if Man is Concept and if the Concept is Time (that is, if Man is an essentially temporal being), Man is essentially mortal; and he is Concept, that is, absolute Knowledge or Wisdom incarnate, only if he knows this. Logos becomes flesh, becomes Man, only on the condition of being willing and able to die.

Alexandre Kojève, Introduction to the Reading of Hegel (Cornell University Press, 1980) pp. 147-148

Hegel says, then, that Time is something, an X, that exists empirically. Now, this assertion can be deduced from the very analysis of the Hegelian notion of (historical) Time. Time in which the Future takes primacy can be realized, can exist, only provided that it negates or annihilates. In order that Time may exist, therefore, there must also be something other than Time. This other thing is first of all Space (as it were, the place where things are stopped). Therefore: no Time without Space; Time is something that is in Space. Time is the negation of Space (of diversity); but if it is something and not nothingness, it is because it is the negation of Space. Now, only that which really exists – that is, which resists – can be really negated. But space that resists is full: it is extended matter, it is real Space – that is, the natural World. Therefore, Time must exist in a World: it is indeed, then, something which "ist da,"as Hegel says, which is there in a Space, and which is there in empirical Space – that is, in a sensible Space or a natural World. Time annihilates this world by causing it at every instant to sink into the nothingness of the past. But Time is nothing but this nihilation of the World; and if there were no real World that was annihilated, Time would only be pure nothingness: there would be no Time. Hence Time that is, therefore, is indeed something that "exists empirically" – i.e., exists in a real Space or a spatial World.

Alexandre Kojève, Introduction to the Reading of Hegel (Cornell University Press, 1980) pp. 136-137

It may be that the Time in which the Present takes primacy is cosmic or physical Time, whereas biological Time would be characterized by the primacy of the Past. It does seem that the physical or cosmic object is but a simple presence (Gegenwart), whereas the fundamental biological phenomenon is probably Memory in the broad sense, and the specifically human phenomenon is without a doubt the Project. Moreover, it could be that the cosmic and biological forms of Time exist as Time only in relation to Man – that is, in relation to historical Time.

Alexandre Kojève, Introduction to the Reading of Hegel (Cornell University Press, 1980) p. 134

In the Phenomenology, Hegel is very radical. As a matter of fact, he says that Nature is Space, whereas Time is History. In other words: there is no natural, cosmic Time; there is Time only to the extent that there is History, that is, human existence – that is, speaking existence. Man who, in the course of History, reveals Being by his Discourse, is the "empirically existing Concept" (der daseiende Begriff), and Time is nothing other than this Concept. Without Man, Nature would be Space, and only Space. Only Man is in Time, and Time does not exist outside of Man; therefore, Man is Time, and Time is Man – that is, the "Concept which is there in the [spatial] empirical existence" of Nature (der Begriff der da ist).

Alexandre Kojève, Introduction to the Reading of Hegel (Cornell University Press, 1980) p. 133

The bourgeois Worker presupposes – and conditions an Entsagung, an Abnegation of human existence. Man transcends himself, surpasses himself, projects himself far away from himself by projecting himself onto the idea of private property, of Capital, which – while being the Property-owner's own product – becomes independent of him and enslaves him just as the Master enslaved the Slave; with this difference, however, that the enslavement is now conscious and freely accepted by the Worker. (We see, by the way, that for Hegel, as for Marx, the central phenomenon of the bourgeois World is not the enslavement of the working man, of the poor bourgeois, by the rich bourgeois, but the enslavement of both by Capital.)

Alexandre Kojève, Introduction to the Reading of Hegel (Cornell University Press, 1980) p. 68

Now, to attribute an absolute value to a being not in relation to what he does, to his acts, but simply because he is, beceuse of the simple fact of his Sein, his Being – is to love him. Hence we can also say that Love is what is realized in and by the ancient Family. And since Love does not depend on the acts, on the activity of the loved one, it cannot be ended by his very death. By loving man in his inaction, one considers him as if he were dead. Hence death can change nothing in the Love, in the value attributed in and by the Family. And that is why Love and the worship of the dead have their place within the pagan Family.

Alexandre Kojève, Introduction to the Reading of Hegel (Cornell University Press, 1980) p. 61

Man is what he is only to the extent that he becomes what he is; his true Being (Sein) is Becoming (Werden), Time, History; and he becomes, he is History only in and by Action that negates the given.

Alexandre Kojève, Introduction to the Reading of Hegel (Cornell University Press, 1980) p. 38