Caleb Faul

Department of Philosophy and Ethics, University of North Dakota, Grand Forks. Author of "Ontologically Interactive Painting: On Susan Rothenberg's Three Heads," Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology 55:2 (2024), 184–197 — the wiki's only Faul source. Faul's argumentative move is the paraphrase-extension of Merleau-Ponty's "Eye and Mind" 139 thesis from artwork-and-interpretations to world-and-paintings: paintings are themselves transformations of the perceptual world that the world itself elicits but does not determine. The metaphysical upshot Faul calls interactive ontology — things "turn into themselves" only through interaction.

Why Faul Matters for the Wiki

Faul is load-bearing for two existing claim entries in the wiki's synthetic register:

  1. claims#faul-institutional-camp: classifies Faul as belonging to the institutional-reading camp of MP secondary literature (alongside Kaushik), not an ethical/existential camp. The classification was a candidate claim before the 2026-04-28 Faul ingest; the ingest now supplies the artifact anchor and the claim is promoted to live. The classification is corrective: Faul's interactive-institution framework is the rival framework that "Paper A"'s distinguishing move presupposes.

  2. claims#cryptic-institution-extends-beith: Paper A's distinguishing thesis is that a fourth (cryptic) mode of institution extends Beith's tripartite passivity (static / genetic / generative) into the painter's discipline of *science secrète* and *déformation cohérente*. The Faul ingest supplies the rival-framework anchor (the interactive-institution reading) that the cryptic-institution thesis distinguishes itself from. Whether this discharges the candidate's evidence gap depends on the user's specifying-statement of what cryptic adds beyond interactive; the gate cannot pass on Faul ingest alone.

Scholarly Profile

  • Position: Faculty in Philosophy and Ethics, University of North Dakota, Grand Forks.
  • Wiki coverage: One paper (2024). The wiki has not yet ingested any other Faul publications.
  • Argumentative approach: Phenomenological-interpretive; close reading of MP's Institution and Passivity, "Eye and Mind," "Indirect Language and the Voices of Silence," and The Visible and the Invisible (especially V&I 124's pregnant passage). Combines this with engagement of contemporary painting (Susan Rothenberg) and a metaphysical generalization (interactive ontology).
  • Distinctive interpretive move: The paraphrase-extension of E&M 139's "the work of art transforms itself and becomes what follows... change[s] it only into itself" from artwork-and-interpretation to world-and-painting. The structural argumentative move is philological (substituting one relata-pair for another while preserving the institution-logic); the homology is asserted on the authority of V&I 124's pregnant passage rather than extensively defended.

Connections

  • contributed faul-2024-ontologically-interactive-painting — Faul's only paper on the wiki; the source page summarizes the argument and the philological moves.
  • coined interactive-ontology — Faul's synthesis-term for the metaphysical view his reading of painting motivates. Single-source novel concept.
  • extends institution to the painter-world relation — distinct from the painter-tradition or artwork-interpretation applications already on the wiki. See institution §"Extension to Painter-World (Faul 2024)" for the wiki entry.
  • is the institutional-camp commentator the wiki uses for its synthetic claims-register; see claims#faul-institutional-camp (live, 2026-04-28).
  • is structurally parallel to the author of vansorge-2025-painting-as-framing (Lisa van Sorge) — both are recent (2024–2025) MP-secondary commentators on painting who correct MP's "rendering visible" rhetoric where it slides toward universal accessibility; the corrections converge at "painting is partial / non-totalizing / responsibility under undecidability" but diverge at the operative figure (Faul: institution + coherent deformation; van Sorge: parergon + framing-decision). See claims for the candidate cross-source structural-parallel.

Open Questions

  • Is the paraphrase-extension defensible at greater length? Faul's argumentative move from §2 to §3 turns on the homology between artwork-interpretation and world-painting. The paper does not extensively defend why the painter is not in the same role as the interpreter (both are recipients of an institutional sense). Is the homology structural or merely formal?
  • Does the interactive ontology commit to panpsychism? Faul anticipates the worry (footnote 60: the metaphysical thesis "will require future work") but does not extensively defuse it. The horses' "openness" is institutional (calling-forth, making-possible), not consciousness-attribution; whether this distinction holds under pressure is the question Faul defers.
  • Is Faul's reading of E&M 139 specific to the published essay, or does it depend on the unpublished working notes? Faul cites E&M but does not engage the V&I working notes or the Eye and Mind manuscript variants; the paraphrase-extension is a published-text move.
  • What is the relation between Faul's interactive institution and Saint Aubert's surrection / donation-en-chair? Faul does not engage Saint Aubert. Whether the interactive-institution framework is compatible with the surrection reading of late MP, or in tension with it, is unaddressed.

Sources

  • faul-2024-ontologically-interactive-painting — the wiki's only Faul source. The paper is a 14-page journal article in the Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology 55:2 (2024). DOI 10.1080/00071773.2024.2332211.

Citation hygiene caution (per General Rule 16): A fabricated Faul citation ("The Painter's Courage," JBSP 55:2, 2024) was generated during paper drafting and removed; the corresponding real paper is "Ontologically Interactive Painting" (the same volume number). Any wiki reference to Faul on painting / institution / Rothenberg must use the real citation only. The fabrication-incident is recorded on claims#cryptic-institution-extends-beith (candidate) Counterpressure and claims#faul-institutional-camp Counterpressure as a load-bearing provenance note.