In contrast to animals, which only come to know death when they are dying, humans carry the certainty of their death with them at all times. Death inevitably looms in the background and can approach at any moment. Arthur Schopenhauer, the master thinker of pessimism, is nonetheless convinced that the essence of our being remains intact in death. It is the individual consciousness that is affected by death. However, this consciousness is merely an illusion. In the moment of dying, we realize that a mere deception had confined our existence to our person.