 Unlike natural duties, special obligations are grounded on something other than (or, in addition to) the intrinsic nature of the obligee. The voluntarist worries support the view that special obligations can only be acquired through the voluntary actions of the agent whose obligations they  are.[3]  (It is important to recognize that voluntarism is a thesis about special obligations alone. The question being pressed by the voluntarist concerns obligations over and above those owed to all persons in virtue of their intrinsic nature or those that we have to promote intrinsically valuable states of affairs.) Thus, the voluntarist will grant that special obligations are acquired through promises and contracts, because, in making a promise or contract, the agent voluntarily agrees to bear a certain burden for the person to whom she makes the promise or contract. But other sorts of purported special obligations, in particular those owed to family members or to fellow citizens, would not be acquired through the voluntary actions of the obligor: one does not choose to be born into a certain family or as a citizen of a given country, so why suppose that, simply as a result of luck, either good or bad, I have obligations, over and above my natural duties or my consequentialist duties, to my family members and to my fellow citizens?