Joseph Gabel

Joseph Gabel (12 July 1912 in Budapest – 15 June 2004 in Paris) was a French Hungarian-born sociologist and philosopher. His work was always strongly influenced by Marxism; he was against Stalinism and critical of the work of Louis Althusser.

He left Hungary because of a Numerus Clausus for Jewish citizens and first studied Psychopathology with Eugène Minkowski, then he turned to Sociology (he was mainly influenced by Karl Mannheim and Georg Lukács). He taught at the Mohammed-V University of Rabat from 1965 to 1971, and at Amiens University from 1971 to 1980.

In 1962, he published his most important work: ''False Consciousness: An Essay on Reification''. From the standpoint of psychopathology, this study works to synthesize Marxist notions of "false consciousness" and reification with the study of schizophrenia. In the following years, Gabel's works stressed the analysis of ideologies and marxist theory of alienation (''The Sociology of Alienation'', 1971; ''Idéologies'' 1974 - 1978; ''Alienation Today'', 1974). Gabel also wrote the articles "Utopia" and "Ideology" in the ''Encyclopedia Universalis'' and he was one of the only French specialists on Karl Mannheim. Provided by Wikipedia