The Global Movement of Thought Enlightenment: The Production, Diffusion, and Internalization of Cognitive Consensus

Institutional supply in global governance has grown increasingly dense, yet humanity is becoming more united in risk and more deeply divided in cognition: cognitive consensus does not generate itself. Drawing on Kant's idea of enlightenment, Habermas's theory of the public sphere, Beck's theory of the risk society, and Sunstein's analysis of information cocoons, this paper proposes the concept of a "global movement of thought enlightenment" and argues that it is the cognitive precondition for the Community with a Shared Future for Humanity to move from idea to reality. The paper first rebuilds the academic legitimacy of the term "enlightenment" by returning to Kant's original definition ("have the courage to use your own understanding") and responds to contemporary critiques, including the dialectic of enlightenment, the critique of modernity as an attitude, and postcolonial critique. It then defines the concept of the global movement of thought enlightenment — a cross-civilizational process of public reason construction among plural actors — and demonstrates its necessity on four grounds. On this basis, the paper reconstructs the five-stage mechanism first outlined in the book manuscript (risk visualization, production of consensual ideas, diffusion through public intermediaries, internalization by the public, and institutional feedback), specifying the enabling conditions and failure scenarios of each stage — including algorithmic cognitive cocoons, "infodemic," and the ritualization of internalization — and elaborates three differentiated paths, four types of subjects with their organizational conditions, and the boundaries and risks of enlightenment. The paper holds that only organized, stage-by-stage, self-restrained enlightenment can turn the ideal of community into a shared capacity for judgment.