The article seeks to investigate the epistemological assumptions that guided the National Assessment System – Sinaes, deployed in Brazil in 2004 to show a path to Kant, when examined the principles laid out in the original document of Sinaes, and another, apparently opposite, to Descartes, when observed the evaluative system praxis. It is argued about this Sinaes polar looks, and the consequent dissatisfaction of the academic community about this rupture between principles and execution. At the end we propose some possibilities to start an overcoming of this duality, based on the tripod on which is based the system, and the central position of institutional self-assessment against the other two pillars, the assessment of undergraduate courses and the national examination of student performance.
Institucional evaluation; Sinaes; Epistemology