Koszul algebras have arisen in many contexts; algebraic geometry, combinatorics, Lie algebras, non-commutative geometry and topology. The aim of this paper and several sequel papers is to show that for any finite dimensional algebra there is always a naturally associated Koszul theory. To obtain this, the notions of Koszul algebras, linear modules and Koszul duality are extended to additive (graded) categories over a field. The main focus of this paper is to provide these generalizations and the necessary preliminaries.