In the remarks that follow, I present and defend an argument, taken from Nietzsche's later writings, against granting privileged value to truth and to truthfulness. In short, this argument identifies an unconditional value of truth and demonstrates that within this value lies the denial of its own justification, that is, that the value is self-vitiating. The argument is significant if, as Nietzsche holds, this value is the precondition for such pursuits as modern science and philosophy, as it has heretofore been understood. Because my interpretation of Nietzsche's argument is anything but well-accepted, I need to rescue him from the prevailing and fateful interpretation that attempts to retain reverence for the truth in Nietzsche's name. Such reading was begun in Walter Kaufmann's well-known book and has been developed by Maudemarie Clark to the satisfaction of the editors of recent editions of Nietzsche's work. After defending my interpretation, I conclude by sketching another possibility for living in which this value would not dominate, and in doing so I turn to the figure of the artist and then toward revaluation of less palatable and disrespected term, namely, superficiality. Before beginning to consider Nietzsche's argument itself, I must first clarify few preliminary issues, the first of which is to recognize that by reading Nietzsche in light of the question of the value of truth, I presume that the distinction between truth and falsity, at least in its most minimal conception, is maintained in Nietzsche's writings. I am aware that the nature and status of truth is not simple matter for Nietzsche and that in his work truth proves to be social and linguistic phenomenon, in his words, a mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, and anthropomorphisms.t Many charge that this amounts to perspectivism or the position that truth is mere illusion, and defending him against these charges would lead beyond the scope of this essay. I believe it can safely be said, however, that despite his consequential and radical reworking of truth, Nietzsche would find no reason to question the truth of the claim that there are fewer that forty words in this sentence. What is in question for him, rather-and made questionable for the first time, he wants to claim-is what he calls the will to truth. This phrase always signifies the position that truth has unconditional value, position to which Nietzsche attributes that slogan: Nothing is needed more than truth, and in relation to it everything else has only second-rate value.2 This leads immediately to the further question: Where is this to truth embodied? Who, if anyone, shares this value? It is difficult if not impossible to furnish concrete examples of practices that necessarily result from specific set of values, but I nevertheless suggest the following institutions, provided that it be understood that I mean to indict only these practices as there are commonly recognized and that I could not possibly account for every imaginable variation of them. Modern atheism is simple, yet nontrivial, example. The atheist rejects the claims to transcendent deity solely on the basis of the lack of evidence for this belief: societal benefit and personal well-being are ignored. Atheism owes its success to reduction of all criteria to that of truthfulness.3 Another modern proponent of the limitless importance of truth, and one to which Nietzsche often returns, is mathematical science. What would it look like to subordinate all other concerns to the search for knowledge if not the stale and sterile laboratories whose florescent lights and power generators facilitate endless experimentation on rodents or subatomic particles? And finally, is not philosophy itself, born of the Delphic commandment to know thyself and its transformation into the Socratic condemnation of ignorance, fueled by this very same value? One might easily respond that while it is certainly possible for the above pursuits to be engaged out of an abstract commitment to the truth, one might just as likely take them up simply because they are enjoyable? …