A Metaphorical Coffee Shop

Why a coffee shop theme for a philosophy website and blog?

Philosophers often need coffee to stay awake, but there is no actual coffee to be had here at Ontic Cafe. Anyway, some philosophers prefer a nice red or some of the stiffer varieties of relaxant, rather than a stimulant. The reason for the theme is a historical context.

David Hume, one of the three great empiricist philosophers (John Locke, and George Berkeley being the others), and arguably the most important, never held an academic posting. By the time he began applying for such positions he had already published his work A Treatise Concerning Human Nature (called 'The Treatise'.)

The work was monumental and brilliant and regarded as Hume's greatest, but it attracted the ire of zealots and repressive religionists due to Hume's apparent atheism and disdain for religious enthusiasm. His career in academia was sabotaged and politically stymied from that point onwards.

Hume famously wrote an anonymous article called An Abstract of A Treatise of Human Nature  to promote his work, and this article served as something of a precis to Hume's Later An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding.
During his brilliant but troubled career, Hume was a frequenter of coffee houses in Edinburgh and La Flèche in France where he lived for a time to save costs, and where he famously taunted the Jesuits with his writings.
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