Jacques Derrida was Director of Studies at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris. English translations of his work include Given Time, Memories of the Blind, Specters of Marx, The Politics of Friendship, and The Gift of Death.

As Jacques Derrida shows in The Politics of Friendship, many great meditations on friendship-by Cicero, by Montaigne, by Bataille, by Blanchot-are also meditations on mourning ... For Derrida, death lays bare the essential separateness of the friend not only in death but also in life.