"You are not of an age to have thought much" said Reason.

The giant bent forward in his chair and looked at her."Who are you?" he said.

"My name is reason", said the virgin.

"Make out her passport quickly" said the giant in a low voice.
"And let her go through our dominions and be off with all the speed she wishes."

"Not yet" said reason. "I will ask you three riddles before I go, for a wager."

"What is the pledge?" said the giant.

"Your head", said Reason.     -C.S. Lewis, Pilgrim's Regress.

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In conversations and disputes with others I'm often (well, I used to be) surprised with how reticent people are to actually dispute anything.  They get uncomfortable and flustered and often angry, and often after I ask them a question say something like "OK you're right, are you happy?"  Or "you win" as if they're worn out and trying to get me off their back.  Granted, I never wanted to be "on their back" to begin with, and I don't get why people treat approach discussion like a pacifist approaches a fistfight or a fat man approaches a flight of stairs.  My discussion partners and I often seem to have two completely different assumptions about what we're doing.

Rewind 2.5 thousand years, and you get back to some Greek guys called Sophists.  After devoting themselves to philosophy, they decided there was no truth and the real use of reason and language was as a weapon, an instrument of power to exercise your will over others.  Many sold their services to train young men in the used of language and rhetoric this way, as if they were teaching them swordplay.
Socrates disagreed, as did his disciple Plato. They believed that there was truth to be gotten to, a god to be served, and that was the point of language and reason to expose falsehood and seek truth.

In our day, or a few decades back, postmodern philosophers said basically the same thing as the Sophists, and said that anyone that gave an account of anything was on a power trip, trying to get people to buy into and fit into his story.

So, when I'm talking with people, it feels like I have to explain myself often.  I'm not trying to "win".  I haven't invited you to fistfight, or even to spar.  Reasoning is more than fighting.  They have some overlap, I won't deny that, but the fight of reason is hopefully against the common enemy of the combatants.

When I engage you in discussion, my aim is to combat untruth.  It may turn out to be in me.  It may turn out to be in you.  But either way that's what the blade of truth and reason was forged for.  The bladework of language is meant to serve that end. I don't want to "beat" you.  I want to serve both you and I and  even more centrally to serve the God of Truth.