Thinking strategically about ‘corporate personhood’

Abstract

The conceptual categories ‘person’ ‘citizen’ and ‘moral-agent’ are re-analyzed in a way that integrates perspectives, takes into account interactivity and makes helpful use of models or diagrams. The primary-qualities of these three categories are duly emphasized. Various aspects of the concept of a for-profit corporation are then also described and depicted (e.g. fiction, aggregate and real-entity) but with careful references to the logical (set-like) distinction between a corporation per se and its human members jointly or severally. The much-debated composite notions of corporate-personhood, corporate-citizenship and corporate-moral-agency are then re-analyzed, including their intentionality aspects, but with reference to their respective ‘primary qualities’. There follows a discussion of the apparent motives of the participants in the continuing debate about corporate-personhood, citizenship and moral-agency when they themselves emphasize selected qualities of the corporation.