Before undertaking the arduous task of trying to understand Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, it is helpful to consider briefly two preliminary questions. The first question is: Who was Kant's intended audience for this work? Whom did he hope to win over with its main argument? Given that Kant wrote the first Critique in German when it still would have been possible for him to have written it in Latin, just as he had his Inaugural Dissertation and several other earlier works, it is clear that he was writing primarily, even if not exclusively, for German-speaking philosophers in the second half of the eighteenth century. Who are these philosophers, and what views do they hold? Unfortunately, Kant's own text gives us very little explicit information on these points. However, this lack of information should not be thought particularly surprising, since it would be natural for Kant to assume that given his choice of audience, his readers would be in a position to identify who was coming under attack, on what point, and for what reason. At the same time, this situation does present an extra obstacle for contemporary readers, given that we do not, as a rule, know simply from reading his texts who his opponents are, what views they hold, and on what grounds.

The second, much more difficult question is: What would Kant's intended audience have understood the overall project and significance of the first Critique to be?