Assentatio
assentatio
Flattery by agreement: the vice of the one who always approves, says what you want to hear, and never holds an opinion contrary to yours. In *Laelius*, Cicero makes it the capital enemy of friendship—not because it lies about its object, but because it suppresses truth, the only ground where two souls can meet. The *assentator* is not first a liar: he is a man without a soul of his own, who adopts yours "at the slightest sign." Unlike heavy-handed praise (*adulatio*), *assentatio* is subtler and harder to unmask, for it disguises itself as sincere agreement.
il n'est rien de plus pernicieux en amitié que la flatterie, les manières doucereuses, la complaisance outrée.
The Latin assentatio comes from assentari, to align with another’s opinion, to echo their sentiment. The word does not initially denote deceit, but assent: the flatterer is the one who always says yes. Cicero carefully distinguishes it from adulatio, crude praise; assentatio is subtler, for it presents itself as spontaneous agreement. Cicero warns against “the flatterer who hides and disguises himself,” whom one does not always unmask.
Its danger is not primarily for the flattered, but for the bond. True friendship, for Cicero, rests entirely on truth: two souls become one only when nothing is concealed between them. The assentator, who mirrors every sign of the other, no longer has a soul of his own—and thus introduces falsehood into what endures only through truth. This is why the remedy is not estrangement but frank speech: the friend who warns, even at the risk of wounding, serves better than the one who makes excuses.
Three things must be kept apart. Assentatio is the act of flattery; vain glory (kenodoxia) is the taste for being flattered, the appetite for the gaze on which it thrives—“no one lends a more willing ear to flatterers than he who flatters himself.” They seek each other out. By contrast, Chinese sincerity (cheng 誠) is not a relational virtue but the alignment of a being with its reality, of which the sage’s unadorned speech—“sincere words are not elegant”—is merely the sign. Flattering through assent ≠ delighting in flattery ≠ coinciding with truth.