It seems to me self-evident that it is worthwhile to understand the best thoughts of the past, to appropriate them, to criticize them.

In my view, there was a long period in which analytical philosophy had little to say about ethics. I think their intellectual tools did not do well with it, and analytical philosophy was above all about revolutionizing the philosophical tool box. It was more or less assumed that the Truth about ethics was some form of utilitarianism (perhaps because some consequentialist calculus looked to them like a respectable tool). Kantian ethics was then interpreted as a particularly odious version of the False - "deontology" - and treated with contempt.

My own view is that Kant's conception of the duality of the good (morality and happiness, the good of our person and the good of our state or condition) is a distinctively modern view.

Kant thinks we can show that there is no contradiction in supposing we are free.

We commit not only theoretical error but also moral wrong in objectifying ourselves or other rational beings, ignoring their capacities for free action and communicative interaction with us.

Reason necessarily expresses itself through emotions and emotions are healthy only insofar as they are expressions of reason.

Kant did think he had a moral route back to rational faith in God, for those who need it, and he thought that at some level, we all do need something like it.