Machine generated contents note: 1. Introduction: 'in politics we have an art...'; 2. No compromise about compromise; 3. The genealogy of compromise and its vagaries; 4. The dialectic of the individual; 5. Compromise and centripetal individualism; 6. Compromise and centrifugal individualism; 7. The forgotten road of representation: continental contractarian theories; 8. The British contract as com-promise; 9. Conclusions: compromising the art of compromise - the one-dimensional man.