The only serious philosophical question is whether life is worth living

Camus opens by declaring that judging whether life is or is not worth living is the fundamental question of philosophy, more urgent than abstract metaphysical puzzles about the nature of reality or knowledge. He treats the decision to continue living, or not, as a practical verdict people render through their actions long before they render it through explicit argument.

He's not advocating suicide as an answer; rather, he's insisting that any philosophy avoiding this question directly is dodging the only question that actually matters to a person living inside a mortal, meaning-hungry existence. Most philosophical systems, in his view, either evade the confrontation or resolve it too quickly with borrowed comfort from religion or ideology.

This framing sets up the entire essay as an attempt to answer honestly: to face the absence of ultimate meaning without either denying it or using it as grounds for despair.

Takeaway: philosophy's job is to answer the question people actually live inside, not the ones that are merely intellectually comfortable.