Camus defined rebellion as setting limits against tyranny rather than pursuing utopia.

Evidence

Moreover, for Camus, true rebellion does not mean reaching towards an ecstatic vision of a shining city on a hill. It means setting a limit on some very real present state of affairs that has become unacceptable. For example, a slave who has been ordered around all his life suddenly decides he will take no more, and draws a line, saying ‘so far but no further’. Rebellion is a reining in of tyranny. As rebels keep countering new tyrannies, a balance is created: a state of moderation that must be tirelessly renewed and maintained. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 810

Categorization

• DEFINE: The key distinction between Camus’s ‘limit-setting’ rebellion and Marxist utopian revolution — essential orientation.
• QUESTION: The ‘so far but no further’ limit ethic anticipates later ‘negative liberty’ and radical democratic theory — worth pursuing the parallels.
• XREF: Camus’s moderation-through-counter-tyranny anticipates both post-Marxist critics of utopianism and later debates about perpetual critique in Foucault. — connects to: Camus rejected Marxist historical inevitability in favor of perpetual rebellion. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 809; Marcuse framed rebellion as a physiological reaction to suffocation, not revolution. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2605
• ADDENDUM: Connects to the sacrifice article’s interest in how collective action and resistance sustain social orders through repeated renewal.