Corporations are a global phenomenon, an entrepreneurial instrument that is subject to state regulation, id est national law in the traditional sense of lex societatis: the human corporation lives in valuation law (lex aestimatio, see 8.4.2 ). The corporation (from Latin corpus, body) counts as an entity: “a body of people that has been given a legal existence distinct from the individuals who compose it.” A legal entity as an entirety (Gesamtheit) authorised by law for a certain purpose (Zweck), id est: a common purpose (gemeinsamer Zweck). It is prominent in large companies, founded through a statute, in former times a royal charter, by now mostly through registration and designed in manifold ways. This means that the corporation (joint stock company) is of eminent importance both economically and socially, therefore it is the topic of politics. It is described as “a work of irreconcilable contrasts, imbued into it through political history as well as through the history of economics and the history of ideas.”