Recently, two apparent truisms about self-control have been questioned in both the philosophical and the psychological literature: the idea that exercising self-control involves an agent doing something, and the idea that self-control is a good thing. Both assumptions have come under threat because self-control is increasingly understood as a mental mechanism, and mechanisms cannot possibly be good or active in the required sense. However, I will argue that it is not evident that self-control should be understood as a mechanism, suggesting (...) that we might also argue the other way around: if we have independent reason to hold onto the idea that self-control is inherently good and active, the conclusion might be that self-control cannot be a mechanism. I will show that Aristotle's original analysis of self-control actually offers grounds for both assumptions: he took there to be conceptual connections between self-control and goodness/activity. By examining these connections, I argue that an Aristotelian approach could offer promising leads for a contemporary non-mechanistic understanding of self-control as a normative capacity. (shrink)