The question that motivates the entirety of Chapter 3: "Critique" is one that is easy to pose but almost impossible to sound the full depths of -- what is the value of truth? When we hear Deleuze ask this question, we have to keep in mind the notion of value that he gave us at the very beginning of the book. A value doesn't simply refer to some relatively arbitrary propositional belief about what's important that we hold or abandon depending on the day. It would be closer to say that we actually embody our values, or that our whole mode of life already expresses what it is that we value. Values are a product of evaluation, the byproduct of our way of approaching life.
In fact, the notion of value implies a critcal reversal. On the one hand, values appear or are given as principles: and evaluation presupposes values on the basis of which phenomena are appraised. But, on the other hand and more profoundly, it is values which presuppose evaluations, "perspectives of appraisal", from which their own value is derived. The problem of critique is that of the value of values, of the evaluation from which their value arises, thus the problem of their creation. (NP, 1)
So when we ask about the value of truth, we're asking what type of life results in the need to see truth as its supreme value. Which mode of existing can't do without truth, and conversely, what mode of living is implied by the very existence of the concept of truth. The question immediately links Deleuze's interpretation of Nietzsche back to the 'critical' philosophy of Kant. Kant famously wanted to know how synthetic a priori knowledge was possible. In other words, what did the world need to be like for logical, mathematical, or philosophical reasoning to function (as Kant presumed that it did)? We might call it an inquiry into the condition of possibility of knowledge. It's a bit like inferring a metaphysics from just the existence of an (assumed) epistemology. This was Kant's critical project. His Critique of Pure Reason wanted to know how a priori reasoning was possible, and on the basis of that, to assign it some limits. Deleuze has already pointed out (pg. 52) that Nietzsche is in a sense the heir to, and critic of, Kant's project. In this chapter he explores this connection further, and shows us how Nietzsche fulfills the promise of a radical Kantian critique, a promise which Kant himself betrayed right from the start (basically by not criticizing precisely the things I left in parentheses above -- the pre-existence of the unified reasoning subject).
Before getting into the details, it's best to answer the question in the simplest way first. What is the value of truth? Truth is a stopping point. If truth is understood in our habitual manner -- as the correct mental representation of the facts of the world -- then the search for truth is the search for a feeling of identification or harmonization that allows us to stop changing our minds. When we discover the truth, we see things, "as they really are". Our subjective representation has come into some sort of alignment with the objective world. We have polished the mirror to the point where we see things clearly and distinctly, and now we can quit polishing. What type of person (or put better, what mode of living) attaches a supreme value to being able to stop? One who is exhausted. The concept of truth is the product of a tired and reactive mind that just wants to quit, to come to a final equilibrium that ends the quest and obviates the need for any future changes. The 'will to truth' is actually just a disguise for the nihilistic will, that is, the negative will to power or the will to nothingness. This is what truth is for, and what the one seeking it secretly wants -- to end the struggle, to silence the questions. Someone who values truth is someone who lives life as a struggle, and who resents the clamoring questions.
Your first reaction on hearing this analysis of the value of truth may be to object to the correspondence theory of truth it rests on. You might say that truth as accurate representation is an old metaphysical concept we no longer have any use for. Nowadays, we are all pragmatists or utilitarians who just believe that the truth is what works. Officially, like good agnostics, we have no opinion on whether a belief accurately represents some ultimate reality or not; we simply know that acting as if this belief were accurate benefits us. At first this sounds like a pretty important objection to the idea that the will to truth is secretly nihilistic. Maybe what we want with the truth is just a means of benefitting ourselves, and who could object to that, right? The plausibility of this response is probably why Deleuze immediately takes up the question of "utility" in the first subsection 3.1. We quickly discover that defining truth as what is useful just displaces the question without changing the stakes. The key issue remains unexplored: who or what is the truth useful for? What type of life judges every potential action on the basis of its own benefit?
Deleuze's analysis of this question is quite revealing. He suggests that the type of life presupposed by the question is precisely one that does not act. The self that benefits is not the same self that acts.
That is: to whom is an action useful or harmful? Who considers action from the standpoint of its utility or harmfulness, its motives and consequences? Not the one who acts: he does not "consider" action. It is rather the third party, the sufferer or the spectator. He is the person who considers the action that he does not perform - precisely because he does not perform it - as something to evaluate from the standpoint of the advantage which he draws or can draw from it. (NP, 74)
"Considering" the utility of our action actually separates us from our ability to act. We create a division within ourselves between the one who decides on the action and the one who carries it out. While we often imagine this decider is some completely free inner will we possess, this mystical character never actually does anything. They plan future actions and judge past ones. And if they possess enough 'will power', they trigger or launch current actions. But when it comes to executing a real action they are nowhere to be found. As the Taoists might say, the doer of an action is empty -- the action does itself or occurs through inaction. So the very idea that actions have utility, that we do them for a reason or have some end goal in mind requires the existence of a type of life that is removed from life. Depending on how you look at it, this third party either lives continually within us, or stands outside of us and coordinates our various temporal selves. Either way, we have a strong tendency to identify this useless interloper as the essence of our self. Yet all this self ever actually does is fabricate and evaluate images of action in a world disconnected from real actions.
Now, in this abstract relation, whatever it is, we always end up replacing real activities (creating, speaking, loving etc.) by the third party's perspective on these activities: the essence of the activity is confused with the gains of a third party, which he claims that he ought to profit from, whose benefits he claims the right to reap (whether he is God, objective spirit, humanity, culture or even the proletariat ...). (NP, 74)
So even with a more utilitarian conception of truth, we discover that the question of whose life benefits from the truth is not trivial. It leads us directly into the deeper question of who we think 'we' are. We need some self-conception to even define the notion of who benefits. And it's only the hypothesis of the fixity or continuity -- the essence -- of this self that allows the concept of utility to (appear to) answer the question of the value of truth. Which, to go back to our initial question, means that "the truth is useful" also serves as a stopping point. It's only because I 'obviously' know my essential self, and thus know intimately what is useful for this self, that the truth can come in handy as a means for keeping this self happy. In fact, this 'happy self' is a pure fabrication that simply encourages us to quit asking so many questions. The value of utilitarian truth is the way it both takes for granted and reinforces an 'essential self' or 'human nature' that we can rest everything else on.
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