Camus undertakes the task of answering what he considers to be the only question of philosophy that matters: Does the realization of the meaninglessness and absurdity of life necessarily require suicide?
He begins by describing the absurd condition: Much of our life is built on the hope for tomorrow, yet tomorrow brings us closer to death, the ultimate enemy; people live as if they didn't know about the certainty of death. Once stripped of its common romanticism, the world is a foreign, strange and inhuman place; true knowledge is impossible, and rationality and science cannot reveal the world—such explanations ultimately end in meaningless abstractions and metaphors. "From the moment absurdity is recognized, it becomes a passion, the most harrowing of all.