“absolute motion”: “absolute” presumably because not the motion of things in motion nor even the motion that is the being of a certain class of beings (for example, natural beings or living beings).
But Heidegger first sets about clarifying his notion of “absolute motion” by distinguishing it from what this term might mean in the context of modern physics. In this context the problem is entirely one of measuring motion; motion is deemed “relative” in the sense that “for a possible measurement, one being is seen as in motion relative to another that is at rest and that in its turn can be regarded as also in motion relative to the first [taken to be] at rest” (WP3, 15). If there is anything that from this perspective could count as absolute motion, it would be the system of local motion as a whole; but because this system coincides with space itself, one could not even call it absolute motion (WP3, 16–17). This, at least, is the argument Weiss records. The published protocol by Hans Reiner records something seemingly quite different, even opposite: “In the meantime one can talk even physically of absolute motion when the limits of space coincide with those of the system” (GA83, 258). The argument there, instead, is that such a characterization of motion as absolute, resulting as it does only from the perspective of the relativity of motion with regard to measurement, tells us nothing about the essence of being moved as such, no more than does the notion of relativity itself (258; cf. GA18, 293–294). Weiss records this last argument, but as a response to a different interpretation of absolute motion: it seems that Reiner has conflated the two interpretations. The other interpretation Weiss records is that being-in-motion itself, as characterizing an entire world system that includes the growth of plants and the life of animals, is not relative to anything, is independent of measurement, and in this sense “absolute.” It is of this interpretation of absolute motion that Weiss records the objection that it tells us nothing about the essence of being moved (WP3, 16). In any case, the crucial point is the one again recorded by Weiss: “When we said that the original motion, the ur-motion, is in a certain sense absolute, we understand ‘absolute’ completely differently” (WP3, 17).
We turn to Heidegger’s own perspective when he asserts that kinêsis is a “way of being” (Weise des Seins). Indeed, “The Aristotelian interpretation of being, which has its result in the elaboration of δύναμις and ἐνέργεια as fundamental concepts of being, bears a relation to κίνησις” (WP3, 17). Heidegger’s stated aim is to make clear this relation that remains obscure. He notes that while the modern notion of “reality” (Wirklichkeit) is commonly taken to correspond to Aristotle’s notion of energeia, the former unlike the