To arrive at a thorough clarification of corporate responsibility and thereby to fulfil the aim of this chapter, the focus is first of all on the key concept of responsibility which, like the concepts of truth, rightness and truthfulness, is crucial to the collective process of world-creation and civilisation-formation. Once an adequate context and background have been established for the treatment of the modern phenomenon of the corporation and the growing contemporary concern with corporate responsibility in its different iterations, attention is duly paid to the adjectival qualification corporate. Context and background are provided by reviewing the essentialist and necessitarian ontological assumptions prevailing in ancient cosmological and medieval metaphysical systems of thought against the determinism of which the modern paring of responsibility and freedom contrasts rather sharply. That the historical review of civilizational formations also reveals the ambiguity of the concept of responsibility, given the inherent tension between idealisation and contradicting practical use in dominational practices, proves decisive for the necessary critical assessment of contemporary corporate practices and claims to corporate responsibility, whether environmental, social or subjective. The argument closes with an emphasis on the urgent need to mobilise the civilizational and cultural power of the concept of responsibility not only as a lens to focus on the constitution, shortcomings and prospects of the contemporary corporation, but also to disclose possibilities that could compensate for the self-injurious and damaging selective institutionalisation of the corporation. The promise is the transformation of the lob-sided contemporary corporation into a true corporate citizen capable of participating in the collective process of creating a sociocultural world worthy of humanity.