The reality of my perception is connected for me with necessary consequences: not only that what is perceived is present and present for me; the reality of perception is connected for me with the self-consciousness that I myself am present with what is present. This being-in-the-world necessarily has a stylistic dimension of experience, which can be described with Wölfflin's stylistic spectrum "painterly-linear": the painterly Dasein experiences itself as a part of the world, as merged with it into a unity; in contrast, the linear Dasein experiences itself at a distance from the world as an isolated singularity. The stylistic forms of Dasein become particularly relevant when ethical ideas of a successful life are developed - as can be observed in the works of Kurt Schwitters and Joseph Beuys. As different as their works may seem on the surface, Schwitters and Beuys share a common basic concern as artists: they claim to improve life through their art. Both work with an extended concept of art, which understands art as the work on a form of life and thus as a practiced shaping of life - but this shaping of life is characterized by an opposing style, which has developed from their own relationship to the world. The thesis of the lecture can be pointed out: in the conceptions of aesthetic world improvement in the avant-garde art of Schwitters and Beuys, the designed forms of life reveal the stylistic opposition, known from the history of painting, of an extremely cool, linear thinking on the one hand and an extremely woken, painterly thinking on the other. In both cases, work becomes a tool with which one seeks to improve the world. For Schwitters, art provides the means to protect an ego from an ugly and dangerous world. For Beuys, on the other hand, art represents the possibility of bringing an ego into ecological harmony with the world.