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This article argues that political liberalism is self-defeating as a framework of justification. The argument proceeds in two steps. First, political liberalism’s self-imposed criterion of acceptability to all who are reasonable is contended to lead to a regressive logic in the substantive content of its overlapping consensus. Second, the search for consensus is argued to be intrinsically controversial because of its inspiration by Hegel’s impermissibly contentious project of rational reconciliation. Via intertwined readings of Nussbaum, Rawls and Oakeshott, the paper concludes that political liberalism is undermined at the outset by its self-imposed standard to remain free from controversial commitments.