Philip asked:

Is cynicism alive and well as a school of philosophical thought?

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'Cynicism' is one of those philosophical terms which has acquired a popular meaning at variance with
its original sense. The ancient cynics rejected popular values not because they believed in nothing,
but because they saw popular values as a distraction from true virtue. However, even amongst their
contemporaries the name of the school became associated with an attitude of empty sneering and
contempt. That sense is probably too firmly established for the original usage to be recaptured: no
contemporary school of thought has adopted the name.

This being said, the ideas behind cynicism are still influential. The uncompromising rejection of
popular pieties as obstructions to the acknowledgement of some higher virtue is a familiar feature of
modern protest movements: the more radical sort of environmentalism, for example. The irony is that
such people are, if anything, more likely to be thought insufficiently cynical — that is, too naive —
rather than too cynical.

For an introduction to the cynic school see the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy article at
http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/c/cynics.htm. A longer introduction which attempts to connect the
cynics with the modern world may be found in Luciano de Crescenzo The History of Greek
Philosophy Volume II: Socrates and Beyond(Picador, 1990). An important collection of contemporary
research into the cynics and their influence is R Bracht Branham & Marie-Odile Goulet-Caze, Eds.
The Cynics: The Cynic Movement in Antiquity and its Legacy(California University Press, 1996).

Andrew Aberdein