Marx is thought of as an implacable foe of capitalism. But go back and read the first section of the Communist Manifesto. Notice how it contains a paean of praise for the way capitalism and the bourgeoisie have both enriched the human powers of production and also enabled us to see with clear vision the nature of human society and human history.

Popular religion since the time of Kant and Fichte has gone in a direction they tried to prevent and that has been disastrous for the humanity both of believers and of the rest of us. Look at the role of religion in Republican presidential primaries if you need any confirmation of this last statement.

What are we to think of the shortsightedness of the great mass of people who are content to do nothing about it, and even worse, the greed or venality of the rich and powerful who deliberately bar the way to human survival?

Kantian ethical theory distinguishes three levels: First, that of a fundamental principle (the categorical imperative, formulated in three main ways in Kant's Groundwork); second, a set of duties, not deduced from but derived from this principle, by way of its interpretation or specification, its application to the general conditions of human life - which Kant does in the Doctrine of virtue, the second main part of the Metaphysics of Morals; and then finally an act of judgment, through which these duties are applied to particular cases.

Kant thinks that a free will is a will under moral laws and that freedom and the moral law are distinct thoughts that reciprocally imply each other. Fichte thinks they are the same thought.

Kant's description of most ethical duties reads more like a description of moral virtues and vices. Once we see this, we see that Kantian ethics is indeed a kind of virtue ethics, and that it does not "divide the heart from the head" (to anticipate one of your later questions) but instead recognizes the deep truth that reason and emotion are not opposites.

There is no author or legislator of the moral law. It is simply valid in itself in the nature or essence of things. We become autonomous only when we obey it, because then our will aligns itself with the objectively valid law, and our choice follows the same law as that we give ourselves. We can think of rational faculty (or the idea - the pure rational concept, not exhibitable in experience) as the legislator or author of the law because reason recognizes an objective standard, and to that extent is already aligned with objective moral truth.