Abstract: In his preliminary 1880/1881 draft of Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft (Theorem der Kultur-Philosophie), Tönnies laid the ground for new empirical cultural sciences. “Cultural Sciences” are not just an application or methodology, they comprises everything Tönnies was about——his own experience and understanding of German Reich, his knowledge structure and intellectual tendency, and his life viewpoint. This paper attempts to explain “Cultural Sciences” through three dialectic aspects:1) as empirical science, “Cultural Sciences” study the world through objective facts. Tönnies's early life and his academic background offer us clues of how he viewed German Reich. He believed that modern individualism and Prussian dictatorship were the predicament of the time. 2) Tönnies explained the philosophical foundation of “Cultural Sciences” and called it “Cultural Philosophy”. For him, cultural philosophy was about life ideals based on material reality just as his own ethical ideas were prompted by his observation of real social problems of the time. 3) “Cultural Sciences” could unveil human nature and examine psychological development of individuals. By employing “cultural sciences”, Tönnies was able to identify human “habits” and “sense of obligation” as two elements for the possibility of actual community. Tönnies's subsequent masterpiece Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft:Abhandlung des Communismus und des Sozialismus als empirischer Kulturformen, published in 1887, continued as well as expanded the essential questions of its early draft of 1880/1881. He brought a historical dimension into the book with a concrete investigation of the evolution of modern society and the possibility of community. By studying Tönnies's “Cultural Sciences”, we learnt that understanding material reality and reflecting on life ideals are the very first questions of social science. In this sense, classical sociological theories are still meaningful to the social science of our day.

Key words: Tönnies, the cultural philosophy, society, natural state, the cultural science, community