The Socratic dialogue, a literary genre that grew directly from Socrates's characteristic method of questioning interlocutors, stands as the primary record through which his thought has reached later generations. Because Socrates authored no texts of his own, the genre emerged posthumously in the writings of those who observed him, and it remains the principal vehicle by which his philosophical positions — such as they can be reconstructed — have been transmitted across centuries.

Socrates was born in Athens, in the deme of Alopeke, around 469 BC, and spent his life as a citizen of Classical Athens, working in Ancient Greek as a philosopher, ethicist, teacher, and writer in the oral sense of composing ideas others would record. He is known mainly through the posthumous accounts of classical writers, particularly his students Plato and Xenophon, a circumstance that has given rise to what scholars call the Socratic problem: the difficulty of reconstructing his philosophy reliably given the contradictory nature of those accounts. He is described as both an enigmatic and a polarizing figure in Athenian society.

In 399 BC Socrates was accused of impiety and corrupting the youth, tried, and sentenced to death. As related by Plato, he refused offers from allies to help him escape and was put to death by the administration of poison. Socrates was a major inspiration on his student Plato, who went on to become one of the principal sources through which Socrates's interlocutor style and ideas were preserved.