ng passive euthanasia however is less clear. Passive euthanasia is the act of allowing an individual to die rather than assisting them. Although no explicit action is taken, the negation of any effort to help constitutes as euthanasia as well. For the advocates of euthanasia, passively conducting such an action is legitimate precisely because there is no agent of action to commit wrongdoing; instead the agent is the individual who dies. Detractors of passive euthanasia argue that the action of not doing anything when capable of saving a life is inherently unethical. However, passive euthanasia is regarded as much more of an "intangible" ethical concern than active euthanasia. At the heart of this ethical question is who the agent of action is and thus who is morally responsible in the case of passive euthanasia. On one side of the debate, the argument that since nothing actually happens, then no agent is present and therefore the death is caused entirely by the individual dying. The other side argues that because no action is taken to help the dying individual, the person who omits action is just as culpable because he tacitly consents to the death of that individual.
             In either case, the subject of euthanasia is filled with room for interpretation. The question of morality within this case is abstract because real life situations are extremely complicated and diluted. A philosophical approach to this question cuts to the heart of whether or not life, as an intrinsic value must be preserved over all else. However, even this question is hard to answer. The following section will examine an abstract philosophical approach to the ethics question of euthanasia.
             An examination of Kantian ethics deals formally with his ethics value system, the Categorical Imperative. Kant argues that to determine the ethical value of an action, one must apply the test of a universal imperative. Therefore any action's real m...