ABSTRACT
Can contemporary critical theory offer an account of the reasonableness of its utopian inclinations? Habermas has always been persuaded that the survival of critical theory depends upon it. Critical theory needs to be able to establish that hopes for a better future can be anchored in an estimation of frustrated potentials and emancipatory needs loosened by modernization processes. In a social world that is increasingly dominated by the fatalism of neo-liberal ideologies this seems to be a project that is dramatically out of season.
