The motivation, goal, and philosophical significance of a critique of pure reason

Kant’s critique of pure reason set out to achieve many goals and have a considerable influence on philosophy.  The overall main motivation for the critique was to uncover the true capacity of pure human reason, find the limits of our understanding, and determine the cause of our concepts, all without using empirical knowledge.  Kant realized that humans naturally ask about the existence of an absolute being, the fundamental boundaries of reality, and other questions that exceed possible human experience.  Since we cannot possibly know these answers based on experience, we can only answer them based on pure reason.  Therefore, Kant was interested in investigating possible answers to these “big questions” based on pure reason alone.  Personally, I feel a deep connection between my thoughts and Kant’s philosophy.  Many times I ask myself, just as Kant asked himself, can these questions even possibly be answered or can we actually truly know anything about them? These are some of the most important questions that revolve around the critique.  I personally ask, why are people so certain about the existence of a Supreme Being or supreme world if there has only been constant debate, very limited proof, and no agreement as to an answer?  The main question of Kant’s transcendental philosophy that has also caused a considerable amount of debate was, how are a priori synthetic judgments possible?  How can we innately know something based on experience?  In conclusion, Kant supposed that mathematics is actually the core of a priori synthetic judgments thus general metaphysics can have scientific standing.  Also, Kant acknowledged that human cognition is aimed at answering the unconditioned, but that we cannot possibly know the unconditioned based on experience.  Therefore, he realized that we are subject to unavoidable illusions and unable to reach knowledge of the unconditioned.  The human mind can only distinguish conditioned things.  We can never know “things in themselves” but only conditioned appearances.