At the center of the aesthetic theories of Adorno and Derrida is the claim of art to sovereignty: Art transcends the differentiated structure of modern reason while simultaneously being a moment alongside and beneath others. Particularly, recent hermeneutic aesthetics have viewed the proclamation of aesthetic sovereignty as a relinquishment of the autonomy of art and its equation with a superior insight into the constitution of all reason. In an argument where Derrida's deconstruction and Adorno's aesthetics of negativity mutually critique and illuminate each other, a concept of aesthetic experience is developed that addresses the hermeneutic objection. The core idea is that art, through its negativity, poses a rationally unmanageable threat to our non-aesthetic discourses.