IN 1980, LEO LOWENTHAL FORMULATED asetofprescientinsights about the future of Critical Theory in an interview entitled The Utopian Motif Is Suspended.' By motif, Lowenthal was referring to the eschatological hopes for a better life in the here and now that inspired not only the enterprise of Critical Theory but an entire generation of Central European, Jewish thinkers who, like himself, came of age around the time of World War I and drew on utopian aspects of the Jewish tradition as a source of messianic inspiration.2 Among this generation, a decisive influence on the inner circle of Critical Theorists was exercised by the thought of Ernst Bloch, Georg Lukacs, and Walter Benjamin.3 Prima facie, the claim epitomized in the title of the Lowenthal interview cannot help but seem a startling admission. For if we try to imagine the work of Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, and Herbert Marcuse stripped of this dimension of utopian longing, it seems divested of its most fundamental impulses. Moreover, Lowenthal's contention seems a striking concession in the direction of Jurgen Habermas, who has made a point of trying to integrate Critical Theory with contemporary developments in social science and philosophy of language at the expense of its speculative-utopian tendencies. Maybe [Habermas] is right, Lowenthal observes.