While the focus of preceding chapters has been on written sources, this chapter looks at the archaeologicy of cities as evidence for underlying ideas. The old model of the disintegration of a city of straight lines into tangled suqs is hard to reconcile with the evidence. New cities continue to be built through Late Antiquity, with the model set by Constantinople. Far from indicating the grid as the ideal, it is based on Rome itself, a notably non-gridded city. Despite contrasts of terrain, Constantinople competes with old Rome wherever possible. Justinian was responsible for a series of new cities, as Procopius claims, for which we have the advantage of good archaeological studies. If there is a model for these, it is Constantinople itself. Visigothic Reccopolis follows the same pattern. Exceptional among these new cities is the Umayyad foundation of ‘Anjar, outstanding as the most mathematical grid plan since antiquity; the model seems to be in Roman forts. Finally, Charlemagne’s Aachen is examined; though a palace rather than a city, contemporary court poets celebrate it as a New Rome.

In Chapter 6, we turn to the difficulty of studying sensitive data. In studying politically relevant issues, one may unavoidably encounter phenomena which are sensitive to talk about because they are painful for many. We point out that such data can best be studied if we distance ourselves from the object of our inquiry, by taking a contrastive look at our data. As a case study, we examine political apologies realised after the Second World War by representatives of the Japanese and German states, following war crimes perpetrated by their respective countries. Japanese and German war apologies are highly controversial and have often been described with sweeping overgeneralisations. We believe that it is important to venture beyond such overgeneralisations and examine in a bottom-up and contrastive way – relying on both qualitative and quantitative evidence – exactly how representatives of these countries realised their apologies.

Building upon the previous themes, the book’s last chapter highlights the development of Spanish imperial cosmopolitanism, which enabled officials and subjects to make sense of and subsume the heterogeneous societies and regions they encountered and think of the world as one coherent unity. This cosmopolitanism was demarcated by imperial rivalries and officials’ self-perception as Catholic soldiers. Their actions and interactions with other people were read through the lenses of their Catholic identity, which also fostered a sense of Spanish exceptionalism. Moreover, most global interactions and imaginings occurred in areas usually deemed "peripheral," expressing the unity and coherence of the polity despite its dispersion and diversity.

This chapter argues that by the latter half of the nineteenth century, priests, bishops, and other religious had immense latitude within the diffuse structures of the Church not only to raise money by different means but also to act as the central financial administrator and expert within their own parishes, dioceses, and religious houses, and that this power gave them an influential role in shaping the wider economic culture of Catholic Ireland in the period under review. It first explores levels of accounting and financial management knowledge among clergy and then situates their economic activity, including managing of debt and investments, within a wider transactional framework with wealthy and professional lay Catholics. It finally analyses how clergy were frequently afforded a significant role as arbiters of financial disputes and stewards of financial resources by the laity.

This chapter of the handbook introduces some core elements of moral decision making by framing it from one particular perspective: expected utility theory. In its classic form, expected utility theory focuses on the outcomes of actions: the expected utility of a decision is the sum of the values associated with the different possible outcomes of the decision weighted by the probability of their occurrence. As such, expected utility theory is well suited to explain the moral choices recommended by utilitarianism, which characterizes right actions in terms of the maximization of aggregate utility. As the authors point out, however, expected utility theory can be also used to model nonutilitarian decision making by assigning utilities to actions themselves, not just their outcomes. This action-based form of expected utility theory can readily accommodate the fact that people tend to assign low utility to actions that violate moral norms. Further, action-based expected utility theory can explain a wide range of phenomena revealed by empirical research on moral decision making, such as interpersonal disagreement about fairness, in-group bias, and outcome neglect.

Qatar University (QU) in Doha, Qatar, was founded as a public institution whose purpose was to provide higher education to the academically talented students from the country. After several decades, the institution sought to pursue international standards of excellence, hiring international faculty and offering courses in English. However, a course correction led the institution back towards its original purpose and a desire to strengthen national identity and values.

This chapter of the handbook suggests some lessons from moral psychology for ethics and metaethics. The authors note that empirical research on a wide range of topics, including moral character, happiness and well-being, free will and moral responsibility, and moral judgment, has had a profound influence on recent philosophical theorizing about the foundations of morality. In their chapter they focus on one issue of particular importance: the reliability and trustworthiness of moral judgment. They critically assess three lines of argument that threaten to undermine epistemic confidence in our moral judgments, namely process debunking arguments, arguments from disagreement, and arguments from irrelevant influences. Though the jury is still out on how successful these arguments are, there is little question that they have potentially profound implications both for moral epistemology and philosophical methodology. Perhaps the most important lesson for ethics and metaethics to be drawn from moral psychology, then, may be that future progress in moral philosophy is likely to depend on philosophers and psychologists working together, rather than in isolation from one another.

As people approach the end, both the dying and loved ones may find solace and support in cultural practices. Some practices may be disturbing to the routines and requirements of sterile environments, for instance the sudden appearance of group ritual practices or artifacts. Awareness of some possible cultural practices may help healthcare professionals respond more appropriately when faced with the unexpected. Ultimately, this closing chapter may be smoother and more meaningful for all involved. The wake immediately follows death and may extend for some days, bringing family and community together to accommodate the loss. Mourners may express their grief in culturally specific ways, according to emotional display rules. Funerals and commemorations may do more for the living than the dead, but they become important parts of psychological adjustment to loss. Ancestral veneration particularly aligns with Terror Management Theory, connecting past, present, and future generations in cultural immortality.

The eight very different higher education institutions define excellence in ways that make sense to the people they serve and reflect the demands of culture and place. They are places that have looked for and pursue a clear sense of purpose and where institutional behavior aligns with stated values and goals. These portraits offer insights into the ways institutions can create cultures of excellence without slavishly following the norms and metrics celbrated by international ranking schemes. They also show policymakers that concentrating resources on a few institutions is not the only way to lift quality and strengthen a national system.