Just finished reading Jay Parini's Benjamin's Crossing.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/252154.Benjamin_s_Crossing
A quote, from the character of Gershom Scholem, one of the novel's narrators:
"(Walter Benjamin) suffered the obsessive desire of many intellectuals to make the world whole by applying intelligent pressure of a specific kind, but human intelligence cannot make the world whole. Unchecked by compassion, humility, and a deep skepticism of its own virility, it can only destroy."