Literally, " The thing, itself, speaks, at first face. "
An ideal of hermeneutics which insists that the logical foundation for an
interpretation should be the most
straightforward, most obvious, most logical, most self-evident reading which one would most likely assume from a text when taking it as it comes to one, or reading it as it as, in it's own terms and in its own words, at face value.
Ideally it is an attempt to read a text with fresh wide-open eyes, free from prejudices and preconceptions and all outside influences; as if reading it for
the first time, with no foreknowledge, thereof. Ideal in theory but likely impossible in practice.
Further elaborations should be built upon this foundation if and only if sound, valid, objective, and logical reasons exist to support such deviations.