Tina gave a concessive sigh and rested against the back of her chair.

Concessive holists, by contrast, look on individualism with more favour.

The beginning of an answer to this question is implicit in the accounts of concessive holism we have so far considered.

He makes little humorous concessive noises in his throat, to admit his mistake.

Mr Regan gave a concessive brief smile.

Almost certainly because the breach of principle is interpolated, by the insertion of the concessive licet.tamen.

At first glance, therefore, concessive holists appear to take a purely pragmatic view of the relations between holism and individualism.

Concessive holists cannot simply ignore this divide, as Miller does, for this will leave their own position undefended.

Instead of the question, 'Which form of explanation is right?', concessive holists ask when holist and individualist explanations are appropriate.

In this chapter, I have sought to defend this concessive holist view by drawing attention to the explanatory interest underlying it.

We cannot now implement the whole of that programme and must look for a more concessive approach, capable of accommodating the competing strengths of individualism.

(End of concessive construction.)

This to-be-sure trick is described by grammarians as "concessive" - that is, I'll give you this; it costs me nothing and makes me appear reasonable.

Louis had to adopt his natural daughter Charlotte to ensure a pro-French succession, and Monaco signed a concessive treaty with France in July 1918.

In fact, however, it marks a major transition in the terms of the debate, and separates the concessive form of holism sharply from the absolute form considered earlier.

The existence of the necessity or obligation is not asserted but denied, questioned, conceded (in concessive clauses), or represented as a mere conception rather than as a positive fact ( "subjunctive" ).

To gain a fuller grasp of the strength and scope of concessive holism and of individualism we must ask what interests they serve and what kinds of enquiries they satisfy.

This being so, it is all the more important to end by underlining what I take to be gained by the acceptance of my proposal that concessive holism should be adopted as the most fruitful approach to social explanation.

If concessive holists are to provide a solution to the problem of holism rather than a mere rule of thumb, they must justify their claim that holist and individualist explanations are, if not complementary, at least capable of coexistence.

But it is an implication of concessive holism that there will be no hard and fast answer to this question; the reply will depend on our ability to establish the relevant counterfactuals, which will presumably change with our theories about the social world.

It remains true, nevertheless, that if the members of the school wish, as they say they do, to write 'total history', they must perforce deal with the relations between the properties of social wholes and those of individuals, which are the main focus of concessive holism.

And at the end, when the committee had worked its way around to the very position he had meant them to reach, he would, with a sigh of resignation and a display of concessive largesse, say that the others in the room had talked him around to their point of view.

Adopting this pragmatic approach, I have thus sought to justify the main general conclusion to which my whole argument has been directed: that the way to heal the rift between holism and individualism is to recognise that concessive holism offers a superior approach to the business of social explanation.

Take the concessive phrase "and, yes," which shows up more than 200 times in the speeches collected at the Reagan Presidential Library: "the ability, dedication and, yes, patriotism of you here who are her crew"; "the ideas, the muscle, the moral courage and, yes, the spiritual strength that built the greatest, freest nation the world has ever known."