ABSTRACT
Some of the most keenly contested debates over Habermas's theory of communicative action turn on the idea of language as disclosure. These debates begin with the shared assumption that language constitutes the world we live in by disclosing meaning to us. This chapter offers an illuminating analysis of the role of disclosure in the thought of Jürgen Habermas, both criticising and, in effect, rescuing his theory of rational communicative action by reconciling its procedural aims with the broader and deeper forms of cultural expression and communicative disclosure. Rather than attempt the fruitless exercise of reconciling the tension between reason and disclosure in Habermas's thought, the chapter also presents a a reading of communicative action that highlights the strengths of the dialectical relation between them, a reading for which Habermas, perhaps despite himself, provides ample grounds.
